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BIOLOGY 

LIBRARY 

G 


vim 


-  ] 


THE  MOUSE  IN  THE  BIRD'S  NEST. 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING 


(B>limp$£S  of  American  Natural  Ipsiorg 


By     ERNEST      INGEKSOLL 


ILLUSTRATED 


Nature  is  an  admirable  school  -  mistress.— THOREAU 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN  SQUARE 
1881 


BIOLOGY 

SA 
0 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1880,  by 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


All  rights  reserved. 


CONTENTS. 


THE  author  gladly  acknowledges  his  obligations  to  the 
publishers  of  the  periodicals  named  below,  for  courteously 
permitting  him  to  reprint  these  essays  from  their  pages, 
as  follows : 

PAGE 

IN  A  SNAILERY Scribner's  Monthly.       9 

(       Appktontf  Journal.  \ 

FIRST-COMERS \  [  36 

(  Lippincotfs  Magazine.  3 

WILD  MICE St.  NicMas.     57 

AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE Scribner*s  Monthly.     85 

OUR  WINTER  BIRDS Appletom1  Journal.  106 

THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE Popular  S<ience  Monthly.  140 

THE  SONG-SPARROW The  Field  (London).  171 

CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES „ Sunday  Afternoon.  182 

How  ANIMALS  GET  HOME Scribner's  Monthly.  199 

A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE Harper's  Magazine.  222 

BANK-SWALLOWS Popular  Science  Monthly.  241 


383456 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

THE  MOUSE  IN  THE  BIRD'S  NEST Frontispiece 

BULIMUS,  CYCLOSTOMA,  AND  OTHER  TROPICAL  SNAILS 11 

ANATOMY  OF  THE  COMMON  WHITE-LIPPED  HELIX 14 

THE  APPLE-SNAIL,  AND  ITS  EGGS 16 

THE  COIL-SHELL  (PLANORBIS)  AND  A  LIMNEA .  17 

THE  UNDER  SIDE  OF  A  WET  CHIP 18 

THE  SNAILS  OF  THE  TORRENTS 19 

AN  EDIBLE   SNAIL 24 

HELICES  IN  HUMBLE  CIRCUMSTANCES 2$ 

AN  ALIEN  IN  THE  CELLAR 28 

HOUSE-WREN 40. 

THE  HOUSE-MOUSE ! 58 

THE  JUMPING-MOUSE  (JACULUS) 61 

THE  WHITE-FOOTED  MOUSE 67 

THE  MOUSE  AND  THE  OYSTER 70 

LEAVING   HOME 75 

THE  FIGHT  WITH  THE  SNAKE 78 

HAUNT  OF  THE  HERON 86 

THE  KINGFISHER 87 

SUMMER  YELLOW-BIRDS 89 

YELLOW-BREASTED    CHATS 92 

A  JUNE  MORNING 95 

THE  HUMMING-BIRD'S  NEST 97 

"ONLY  A  CAT-BIRD"...  .  98 


8  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

EAGLES 100 

THE    PLOVER 101 

THE  WOOD-PEWEE 103 

TURKEY-BUZZARDS 104 

SNOW-BUNTING 109 

BROWN  CREEPER 114 

CARDINAL-GROSSBEAK , 116 

A  YELLOW-BIRD  IN  WINTER  DRESS 117 

CROSSBILL 1 24 

THE  WAXWING 130 

UNWELCOME  ! 132 

A  SHRIKE 139 

A  MOTHER  AND  CHILD  OF  THE  PLAINS 141 

TRAVELLING  HERDS 145 

THE  SIGNAL — I^FFALO  HERD  IN  SIGHT 149 

INDIANS  KILLING  BUFFALOES  ON  THE  UPPER  MISSOURI 155 

A  FIGHT  AGAINST  FATE 159 

THE  BITTER  END 167 

FUN  FOR  THE  BOYS,  BUT — 243 

'A  NARROW  ESCAPE 247 


FRIENDS    WORTH    KNOWING. 


I. 

IN  A    8NAILERY. 

TWO-THIRDS  of  the  persons  to  whom  I  show  the  little 
land  and  fresh-water  mollnsks  in  my  snailery  either  start 
back  with  an  "  Oh !  the  horrid  things !"  which  causes  me 
some  amusement,  or  else  gaze  straight  out  of  the  window, 
saying  languidly,  "  How  interesting  1"  which  hurts  my 
pride.  I  confess,  therefore,  that  it  is  contrary  to  experi- 
ence to  attempt  to  interest  general  readers  with  an  ac- 
count of 

"  Ye  little  snails,  with  slippery  tails, 
Who  noiselessly  travel  across  my  gravel." 

Yet  why  not  ?     Snails  are  of  vast  multitude  and  variety, 
ancient  race,  graceful  form,  dignified  manners,  industrious 
habits  and  gustatory  excellence ;  quod  est  demonstrandum. 
Snails  differ  from  other  gasteropodous  mollusks  chiefly 


10          «.  : :  •  jefiJ£N£&  WORTH.  KNOWING. 

*"  *  :^:.>;;  ;  •;  :     ;  -   "  '' 
in  that  they  are  provided  'with*  'kings,  and  thereby  are  fitted 

to  live  in  air  instead  of  water.  Hence  all  true  snails  are 
terrestrial.  As  the  snail  crawls  upon  a  cabbage-leaf,  all 
that  you  can  see  of  the  body  is  the  square  head  bearing 
two  long  and  two  short  horns,  with  the  muscular  base  ta- 
pering behind.  There  is  an  oily  skin,  and  on  the  back  is 
borne  a  shell  containing  the  rest  of  the  body,  twisted  up  in 
its  spiral  chamber.  Extending  along  the  whole  under  sur- 
face of  the  body  is  the  tough  corrugated  disk  upon  which 
the  animal  creeps.  This  foot  is  the  last  part  of  the  body  to 
be  withdrawn  into  the  shell,  and  to  its  end,  in  a  large  divi- 
sion of  pulmonate  as  well  as  marine  mollusks,  is  attached  a 
little  horny  valve  which  just  fits  the  aperture  of  the  shell 
and  completely  stops  it  up  when  the  animal  is  within.  This 
is  called  the  operculnm.  The  foot  secretes  a  viscid  fluid 
which  greatly  facilitates  exertion  by  lubricating  the  path, 
and  snails  may  often  be  traced  to  their  hiding-places  by  a 
silvery  trail  of  dried  slime.  So  tenacious  is  this  exudation 
that  some  species  can  hang  in  mid-air  by  spinning  out  a 
mucous  thread  ;  but,  unlike  the  spider,  have  not  the  power 
to  retrace  their  way  by  reeling  in  the  gossamer  cable.  TJie 
slime  also  serves  the  naked  species  as  a  protection,  birds 
and  animals  disliking  the  sticky,  disgusting  fluid ;  and  it 
serves  others  as  a  weapon,  seeming  to  benumb  whatever 


KULIMUS,  CYOLO8TOMA,  ANT*   OTIIEB  TBOPIOAL   SNAILS. 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  13 

small  creature  it  touches.  The  oleacina,  of  Cuba,  thus  fre- 
quently is  able  to  feed  upon  mollusks  of  twice  its  strength. 

The  snail  possesses  an  elaborate  anatomy  for  the  per- 
formance of  all  the  functions  of  digestion,  respiration,  cir- 
culation, and  reproduction.  A  collar  of  nervous  matter 
encircles  the  throat,  whence  two  trunks  carry  nerves 
throughout  the  body,  and  filaments  pass  forward  to  the 
u  horns,"  the  longer  and  superior  pair  of  which  end  in 
minute  eyes  and  are  called  "  eye-stalks,"  while  the  shorter 
pair  are  only  tactile  organs,  and  hence  "feelers."  These 
tentacles  are  as  expressive  as  a  mule's  ears,  giving  an  ap- 
pearance of  listless  enjoyment  when  they  hang  down,  and 
an  immense  alertness  if  they  are  rigid,  as  happens  when 
the  snail  is  on  a  march.  The  eyes  are  of  little  real  use, 
being  excelled  for  service  by  the  senses  of  smell  and  taste, 
and  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  nerves  generally  are  very 
sensitive,  since  a  slug  will  be  eaten  without  manifesting  pain. 

It  is  not  surprising,  perhaps,  to  find  great  tenacity  of  life 
in  so  lowly  an  animal;  but  Spallanzani,  whose  experiments 
with  bats  are  celebrated,  was  the  first  to  ascertain  that  not 
only  parts  of  the  head,  but  even  the  whole  head  might  be 
reproduced,  although  not  always.  The  shell  is  easily  and 
frequently  repaired,  albeit  hastily  and  not  with  the  fine 
workmanship  of  the  original. 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  15 

The  pulmonates  unite  both  sexes  in  one  individual,  but 
it  requires  the  mutual  union  of  two  individuals  to  fertilize 
the  eggs.  The  eggs  are  laid  in  May  or  June,  when  large 
numbers  of  snails  gather  in  sunny  places.  When  about  to 
lay,  the  snail  burrows  into  damp  soil  or  decaying  leaves, 
underneath  a  log,  or  in  some  other  spot  sheltered  from  the 
sun's  rays,  and  there  drops  a  cluster  of  thirty  to  fifty  eggs 
looking  like  homeopathic  pills.  Three  or  four  such  de- 
posits are  made,  and  abandoned.  This  is  the  ordinary 
method  of  the  genus  helix,  but  some  of  the  land  and  all 
the  pond-snails  present  variations.  The  ova  of  slugs  are 
attached  by  the  ends  in  strings,  like  a  rosary,  and  many  de- 
posits are  made  during  the  year.  Bulimus  and  other  South 
American  genera  isolate  each  egg,  which  in  the  case  of  some 
of  the  largest  species  is  as  big  as  a  pigeon's.  Vitrina  and 
suecinea  glue  them  in  masses  upon  stones  and  the  stems  of 
plants,  while  the  tropical  bulirni  cement  the  leaves  of  trees 
together  to  form  nests  for  their  progeny.  The  pond-snails 
hang  little  globules  of  transparent  gelatine  containing  a  few 
eggs,  or  otherwise  secure  their  fry  to  wet  stones,  floating 
chips,  and  the  leaves  of  aquatic  plants.  In  neritiria,  a  brack- 
ish water  inhabitant,  the  ova,  immediately  upon  being  laid, 
become  attached  to  the  surface  of  the  parent's  shell,  and 
when  the  embryo  hatches  each  egg  splits  about  the  middle, 


16 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


the  upper  part 
lifting  off  like  a 
lid.  Lastly,  the 
eggs  of  the  stout 
paludinse  of  our 


THE   APPLE-SNAIL,  AND  ITS  EGGS. 


western  lakes  and  rivers  are  not  laid  at  all,  but  the  embryos 
hatch  out  in  the  oviduct. 

Under  the  microscope  the  translucent  egg-envelopes  pre- 
sent a  beautiful  appearance,  being  studded  with  glistening 
crystals  of  lime,  so  that  the  infant  within  seems  to  wear  a 


IN  A   SNA1LERY. 


17 


gown  embroidered  with  diamonds.  Ordinarily  the  young 
snail  gnaws  his  way  out  in  about  twenty  or  thirty  days  af- 
ter the  laying  of  the  egg ;  but  eggs  laid  in  the  autumn 
often  remain  unchanged  until  spring;  and,  indeed,  may 
keep  many  years  if  they  remain  cool  or  dry.  The  vitality 
of  snails'  eggs  almost  passes  belief.  They  have  been  so 


TI1E   COIL-SHELL    (PLANOEIUS)    AND   A   LIMNEA. 

completely  dried  as  to  be  friable  between  the  fingers,  and 
desiccated  in  a  furnace  until  reduced  to  almost  invisible 
minuteness,  yet  always  have  regained  their  original  bulk 
upon  exposure  to  damp,  and  the  young  have  been  devel- 
oped with  the  same  success  as  from  eggs  not  handled. 
More  or  less  wholly  dependent  on  moisture,  the  young 

2 


18  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

snails  at  once  seek  out  their  habitual  solitary  retreats,  and 
must  be  looked  for  under  leaves,  logs,  and  loose  stones  in 


THE  UNDER   SIDE   OF   A    VVKT 


the  woods  and  pastures;  at  the  roots  of  fern-tufts,  lurk- 
ing in  the  moss  beside  mountain  brooklets;  hiding  in  the 
crevices  of  rocky  banks  and  old  walls,  crawling  over  the 
mud  at  the  edge  of  swampy  pools,  creeping  in  and  out  of 
the  crannies  of  bark  on  aged  trees,  or  clinging  to  the  under 
side  of  the  leaves.  Some  forms  are  so  minute  that  they 
would  not  hide  the  letter  o  in  this  print,  yet  you  will  soon 
come  to  perceive  them  amid  the  grains  of  mud  adhering 
to  the  lower  side  of  a  soaked  chip. 

For  fresh-water  species, various  resorts  are  to  be  searched. 
Go  to  the  torrents  with  rocky  bottoms  for  the  paludinas 


IN  A  SNAILERY. 


19 


and  periwinkles  '(Melania) ;  to  quiet  brooks  for  physas  and 
coil-shells;  for  limneas  to  the  reeking  swamps  and  stag- 
nant pools  in  the  wet  ooze.  I  know  no  better  place  in  the 
world  for  pond-snails  than  the  tule  marshes  of  the  Pacific 
slope,  where  hundreds  of  the  great  graceful  Limnea  stag- 
nalis  lie  among  the  rotting  vegetation,  or  float  upside  down 
at  the  surface  of  the  still  water.  But  some  of  the  fresh- 
water mollusks  remain  most  of  the  time  at  the  bottom,  com- 
ing to  the  surface  only  to  breathe  now  and"  then  ;  and  to  get 
their  shells  it  is  necessary  to  use  a  sieve-bottomed  dipper,  or 


THE   SNAILS    OF    T1IE   TOURENTS. 


some  sort  of  dredge.     When  the  water  becomes  low  they 
bury  themselves  in  the  mud;  it  is  therefore  always  profit- 


20  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

able,  late  in  the  summer,  to  rake  out  the  "bottom  of  mud- 
holes  where  the  water  has  entirely  disappeared.  Another 
plan  is  gently  to  pull  up  the  water-weeds  by  the  roots,  and 
cleanse  them  in  a  basin  of  water.  You  will  thus  secure 
many  very  small  species.  Experience  will  quickly  teach 
the  collector  where  he  may  expect  to  find  this  and  that 
kind,  and  that  some  caution  and  much  sharpness  of  obser- 
vation are  necessary,  since  some  species  by  their  naturally 
dead  tints,  and  others  by  a  coating  of  mud,  assimilate  them- 
selves so  nearly  to  their  surroundings  as  easily  to  be  over- 
looked by  man  as  well  as  other  enemies. 

The  shell  is  increased  rapidly  for  the  first  two  or  three 
years,  and  the  delicate  lines  of  increment,  parallel  with  the 
outlines  of  the  aperture,  are  readily  visible  on  all  the  larger 
specimens.  Various  other  signs  indicate  youth  or  adult 
age  in  the  shell. 

Mollusks  prosper  best,  cozier  is  par  ibus,  in  a  broken  land- 
scape, with  plenty  of  lime  in  the  soil.  The  reason,  no  doubt, 
why  the  West  India  Islands,  the  Cumberland  Mountains, 
and  similar  regions  are  so  peculiarly  rich  in  shells  of  every 
sort,  is  that  a  ravine-cut  surface  and  a  wide  area  of  lime- 
stone rocks  characterize  those  districts ;  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  I  found  nine-tenths  of  the  Rocky 
Mountain  species  to  be  minute,  since  the  geology  is  repre- 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  21 

sented  by  sandstone  and  volcanic  rocks.*  Hot  springs  are 
very  likely  to  be  inhabited  by  mollusks,  even  when  the  tem- 
perature exceeds  100°  Fahr.,  and  the  waters  are  very  strong- 
ly impregnated  with  mineral  salts. 

Snails  are  mainly  vegetarians,  and  all  their  mouth-parts 
and  digestive  organs  are  fitted  for  this  diet.  Just  beneath 
the  lower  tentacles  is  the  mouth,  having  on  the  upper  lip  a 
crescent-shaped  jaw  of  horny  texture,  with  a  knife-like,  or 
sometimes  saw-like,  cutting-edge.  The  lower  lip  has  noth- 
ing of  this  kind,  but  in  precisely  the.  same  attitude  as  our 
tongue  is  arranged  a  lingual  membrane,  long,  narrow  and 
cartilaginous,  which  may  be  brought  up  against  the  cutting- 
edge  of  the  upper  jaw.  This  "  tongue "  is  studded  with 
rows  of  infinitesimal  silicioas  "teeth,"  11,000  of  which  are 
possessed  by  our  common  white-lipped  helix,  although  its 
ribbon  is  not  a  quarter  of  an  inch  long.  All  these  sharp 
denticles  point  backward,  so  that  the  tongue  acts  not  only 
as  a  rasp,  but  takes  a  firm  hold  upon  the  food.  On  hold- 
ing the  more  transparent  snails  up  to  the  light  it  is  easy  to 
see  how  they  eat,  and  you  can  hear  a  nipping  noise  as  the 
semicircular  piece  is  bitten  out  of  the  leaf.  Their  voracity 


*  See  Dr.  Hayden's  Report  of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  1874; 
and  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  July,  1875. 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


often  causes  immense  devastation, 
particularly  in  England,  where  the 
great  gray  slugs  will  ruin  a  garden 
in  one  night,  if  the  gardener  is  not 
daily  on  the  watch.  Our  own  straw- 
berries sometimes  suffer,  but  a  bor- 
der of  sawdust,  sand,  or  ashes  around 
the  bed  is  an  adequate  protection  in 
dry  weather.  In  trying  to  cross  it, 
the 'marauders  become  so  entangled 
in  the  particles  adhering  to  their 
slimy  bodies  that  they  exhaust  them- 
selves in  the  attempt  to  get  free. 
They  also  are  very  fond  of  fungi, 
including  many  poisonous  kinds. 

At  the  first  hint  of  frost  our  snail 
feels  the  approach  of  a  resistless  las- 
situde, and,  creeping  under  some 
mouldering  log,  or  half-buried  bowl- 
der, it  attaches  itself,  aperture  up- 
ward, by  exuding  a  little  glue,  and 
settles  itself  for  a  season  of  hiber- 
nating sleep.  Withdrawing  into  the 
shell,  the  animal  throws  across  the 


IN  A   SNA1LERY.  23 

aperture  a*  film  of  slimy  mucus,  which  hardens, as  tight  as 
a  miniature  drum-head.  As  the  weather  becomes  colder, 
the  creature  draws  itself  a  little  farther  in,  and  makes  an- 
other u  epiphragm,"  and  so  on  until  often  five  or  six  pro- 
tect the  animal  sleeping  snugly  coiled  in  the  deepest  re- 
cesses of  his  domicile. 

This  state  of  torpidity  is  so  profound  that  all  the  ordi- 
nary functions  of  the  body  cease — respiration  being  so  en- 
tirely suspended  that  chemical  tests  are  said  to  discover  no 
change  from  its  original  purity  in  the  air  within  the  epi- 
phragm.  Tims  the  snail  can  pass  without  exhaustion  the 
long  cold  months  of  the  north,  when  it  would  be  impossi- 
ble for  it  to  secure  its  customary  food.  This  privilege  of 
privacy  reminds  me  of  an  old  distich  about  another  hiber- 
nater : 

"The  tortoise  securely  from  danger  does  well, 
When  he  tucks  up  his  head  and  his  tail  in  his  shell." 

The  reviving  sun  of  spring  first  interrupts  this  deep 
slumber,  and  the  period  of  awakening  is  therefore  delayed 
with  the  season,  according  to  the  varying  natures  of  the  dif- 
ferent species.  A  few  species,  however,  seem  to  hibernate 
very  little,  vitrina,  for  example,  having  been  seen  active  in 
cold  weather,  and  even  crawling  about  in  the  snow ;  while 
the  finest  American  specimens  live  high  up  on  the  -Rocky 


24:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Mountains.  At  any  time,  nevertheless,  an  artificial  raising 
of  the  temperature  breaks  the  torpor,  the  warmth  of  the 
hand  being  enough  to  set  the  heart  beating.  Extreme 
drouth  also  will  cause  snails  to  seal  their  doors  hermetically, 
without  even  hanging  a  card -basket  outside.  This  is  to 
shut  off  the  evaporation  of  their  bodily  moisture,  and  hap- 
pens in  midsummer;  hence  it  is  termed  aestivation.  Cer- 


AN    EDIBLE   SNAIL. 


tain  foreign  slugs  (Testacellidse)  which  have  no  shells,  are 
able  to  protect  themselves  under  the  same  circumstances 
by  a  gelatinous  appendage  of  the  mantle,  which,  in  case  of 
sudden  change  of  temperature,  can  be  extended  like  an 
outer  mantle,  so  to  speak,  from  its  place  of  storage,  un- 
der the  "buckler,"  and  having  wrapped  themselves,  they 
burrow  into  the  soil.  These  carnivorous  testacelles  are 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  25 

the  fiercest  of  all  their  race,  and  one  might  be  excused  for 
quoting : 

"But  he  lay  like  a  warrior  taking  his  rest 
With  his  martial  cloak  around  him." 

Snails  are  found  in  the  most  barren  deserts  and  on  the 
smallest  islands  all  over  the  globe,  reaching  to  near  the  line 
of  perpetual  snow  on  mountains,  and  restricted  only  by  the 
arctic  boundary  of  vegetation.  There  is  a  great  difference 
between  the  snails  of  the  tropics  and  those  of  high  latitudes 
—size,  number  of  species  in  a  given  district,  and  intensity 
of  color  decreasing  as  you  go  away  from  the  equator;  but 
this  statement  must  be  taken  in  a  very  general  sense. * 
Different  quarters  of  the  globe  are  characterized  by  special 
groups  of  land  mollusks  as  of  other  animals — thus,  achati- 
nella,  with  300  species,  is  confined  to  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
But  helix — the  true  snail — with  its  many  subgenera  and 
2000  species,  is  absolutely  cosmopolitan.  The  fresh-water 
forms,  also,  are  spread  everywhere,  except  in  Australia,  and 
flourish  in  cold  countries,  pupa  having  the  hardihood  to  live 

*  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace's  late  work,  "  Tropical  Nature,"  contained  a  long  series 
of  observations  upon  the  colors  of  terrestrial  mollusks  among  other  animals. 
In  two  articles  in  "  Science  News,"  vol.  i.,  pp.  52  and  84,  Mr.  Thomas  Bland 
studied  Wallace's  principles  in  their  application  to  American  snails,  and  found 
that  color  is  a  matter  of  less  account  than  it  has  hitherto  been  considered  to  be. 


26  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

nearer  the  north  pole  than  any  other  known  shell.  Yet  it 
is  a  remarkable  fact,  that,  however  erratic  and  extensive 
may  be  the  range  of  -the  genera  to  which  they  belong,  the 
majority  of  the  species  of  pulrnonates  of  all  sorts  have  an 
extremely  limited  habitat,  in  some  cases  comprising  only  a 
few  square  rods.  A  second  noteworthy  fact,  obtaining  in 
no  other  extensive  group  of  animals,  is,  that  many  more 
species  of  land  shells  exist  in  the  islands  than  on  the  conti- 
nents of  the  world.  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  accounts  for  this 
curious  fact  by  explaining  how  certain  influences  make  isl- 
ands— particularly  if  long  insulated 


HELICES    IN    HTJMBLB    CIRCUMSTANCES. 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  27 

—more  productive  than  continents,  and  at  the  same  time 
liable  to  be  deficient  in  enemies  to  snails. 

How  has  this  curious  distribution*  come  to  pass?  How 
have  seemingly  impassable  barriers  been  overcome,  so  that 
closely  related  forms  are  now  found  at  the  antipodes  ? 

Snails  are  of  domestic  tastes.  "  The  Heathen  painted  be- 
fore the  modest  women's  doors  Venus  sitting  upon  a  snail, 
quce  domi  forta  vocatur,  called  a  House  bearer,  to  teach 
them  to  stay  at  home,  and  to  carry  their  houses  about  with 
them."  They  are  also  slow  of  pace,  as  a  list  of  poets  are 
ready  to  stand  up  and  testify ;  but  they  have  had  a  long 
time  in  which  to  uget  a  good  ready,"  first  to  start,  and  af- 
terward to  accomplish  their  travels,  since  their  existence  as 
a  race  goes  back  to  when  dark  forests  of  ferns  waved  their 
heavy  fronds  over  the  inky  palaeozoic  bogs.  Distance  dis- 
appears in  the  presence  of  such  prodigious  time.  Lands 
like  our  western  plains,  now  an  arid  waste  impassable  to 
rnollusks,  in  by  -  gone  ages  were  clothed  with  dense  and 
limitless  verdure,  where  every  form  of  terrestrial  life 
abounded.  Between  the  present  and  even  the  laying  down 
of  those  cretaceous  sandstones  that  make  the  soil  of  our 
level  plains,  the  Rocky  Mountains  have  been  elevated  from 
an  altitude  at  which  any  mollusk  could  probably  have  lived 
upon  their  summits,  until  now  they  may  be  a  barrier  to 


28 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


many  species.  Such  changes  may  have  happened  any- 
where, again  and  again,  and  thus  the  two  halves  of  a  com- 
munity been  divided.  In  succeeding  centuries  the  mem- 
bers of  the  parted  sections  may  have  diverged  in  their  de- 


AN  ALIEN   IN  THE   CELLAR. 


velopment,  until  on  this  side  of  a  mountain  range,  or  desert, 
or  sea,  we  now  find  one  set  of  species  and  on  that  side  an- 
other set,  which  belong  to  the  same  genera,  and  may  in 
some  cases  be  proved,  as  well  as  surmised,  to  have  had  an 
identical  origin. 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  29 

But  the  main  explanation  of  their  dispersion  is  undoubt- 
edly to  be  found  in  a  land  connection  once  existing  be- 
tween the  different  islands  of  present  archipelagoes,  and 
between  these  and  the  neighboring  main-lands.  It  has  been 
pretty  satisfactorily  demonstrated  that  during  the  glacial 
period  the  oceans  must  have  been  drained  of  water  repre- 
senting a  universal  depth  of  1000  feet,  in  order  to  construct 
the  enormously  thick  ice -caps  which  covered  the  polar 
hemispheres.  This  would  expose  a  vast  area  of  shallows, 
before  and  since  deeply  submerged,  across  which  snails 
might  easily  migrate  to  other  latitudes ;  when,  at  the  end 
of  the  glacial  period,  the  melted  ice  reclaimed  the  shallows, 
the  snails  would  be  left  colonized  upon  the  high  points  now 
widely  separated  by  water. 

More  casual  circumstances  have  always  contributed  to 
this  world -wide  distribution.  Snails  frequently  conceal 
themselves  in  crevices  of  bark,  or  firmly  attach  themselves 
to  branches  and  foliage,  and  thus  might  be  drifted  long  dis- 
tances, since  they  are  able  to  resist  starvation  for  an  im- 
mense period,  and  protect  themselves  against  injury  from 
salt-water  or  excessive  heat  by  means  of  opercula  and  epi- 
phragms;  violent  storms  might  frequently  transport  living 
shells  a  considerable  distance,  aquatic  birds  carry  them  or 
their  eggs  from  pond  to  pond  attached  to  feet  or  plumage. 


30  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

The  astonishing  vitality  of  the  snails  in  every  stage  of 
existence  favors  the  theory  that  they  endure  such  acciden- 
tal means  of  travel  and  thrive  at  the  end  of  it.  Professor 
Morse  records  that  he  lias  seen  certain  species  frozen  in 
solid  blocks  of  ice,  and  afterward  regain  their  activity ;  and 
enduring  an  equal  extreme  of  heat,  where  the  sun's  rays 
crisped  the  leaves  for  weeks  together,  without  any  bad  ef- 
fect. They  have  been  shut  up  for  years  in  pill-boxes,  glued 
for  years  (seven  years  in  one  case,  Dr.  Newcomb,  of  Cornell 
University,  told  me)  to  tablets  in  museums,  and  yet  a  trifle 
of  moisture  has  been  sufficient  to  resuscitate  them.  They 
survive  so  well  being  buried  in  the  ballast  of  ships  that  at 
every  seaport,  almost,  you  may  find  species  imported  in  that 
way,  which  came  to  life  when  the  ballast  was  dumped  at 
the  time  of  unloading.  That  birds  occasionally  carry  them 
about  is  well  verified. 

Such  are  some  of  the  methods  of  dispersion.  Yet  stu- 
dents are  obliged  to  confess  that  the  causes  of  the  present 
puzzling  geographical  distribution  of  land  shells  are  so  com- 
plex that  we  can  hardly  hope  to  determine  them  with  much 
exactness. 

As  to  the  longevity  of  snails,  little  is  known ;  but  some 
individuals  no  doubt  attain  great  age.  Some  species  of 
cylindrella  have  a  habit  of  deserting  the  point  of  the  spire 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  31 

of  their  long,  slender  shells  as  they  grow  old.  The  aban- 
doned portion  speedily  becomes  dead,  and  cracks  off  upon 
the  least  injury.  The  sign  of  a  perfect  adult  shell  in  these 
species,  therefore,  is  that  it  is  broken  !  Mr.  Thomas  Bland, 
the  distinguished  student  of  West  Indian  conchology,  dis- 
covered this  curious  fact.  After  the  cylindrella  has  thus 
voluntarily  left  the  upper  part  of  his  shell,  he  builds  a  par- 
tition across  behind  him.  Often  other  inollusks  are  driven 
to  a  similar  expedient  by  accident  or  the  decay  of  extreme 
age.  This  is  called  decortication,  and  is  almost  always  to 
be  seen  in  the  beaks  of  the  larger  unios  or  fresh-water  mus- 
sels of  our  inland  rivers.  The  spiral  shells  most  likely  to 
be  thus  affected  are  those  that  live  in  swift  running  water, 
where  the  bottom  is  rocky— such  as  the  members  of  the 
families  viviparidse  and  strepomatidse.  The  latter  are  rare- 
ly seen  otherwise  than  dreadfully  broken. 

Another  curious  thing  is  to  be  noticed  in  this  connection:, 
whole  species  sometimes  suddenly  die  out.  Not  only  a 
conch  ologist,  but  others,  travelling  through  certain  parts 
of  our  western  territories,  are  struck  by  the  prodigious 
quantities  of  dead  white  snail -shells  scattered  over  the 
ground.  These  are  the.  Helix  cooperi,  of  which  a  few  are 
still  living  in  nooks  and  corners  of  the  mountains.  They 
are  of  all  sizes,  degrees  of  variation,  and  ages,  and  lie 


32  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

bleached  in  millions  on  the  surface  of  the  ground.  Mr. 
E.  L.  Layard,  in  a  recent  number  of  the  London  Field,  men- 
tions a  precisely  similar  case  in  Mozambique  and  another 
in  Fiji.  "Why  have  these  species  thus  suddenly  become  ex- 
tinct ?  As  far  as  we  can  see,  there  is  no  cause  for  their  epi- 
demic death. 

Snails,  being  great  eaters,  meet  their  just  reward  in  being 
eaten.  The  paludine  forms  are  sought  after  by  all  sorts  of 
water  birds,  particularly  ducks  and  rails;  while  the  thrush- 
es and  other  birds  crush  the  shells  of  the  land  snails  and 
extract  their  juicy  bodies.  The  woodland  birds,  however, 
will  riot  eat  the  naked-bodied  slugs:  the  slime  sticks  to 
their  beaks  and  soils  their  feathers;  but  the  ducks  seem  to 
have  no  such  dainty  prejudices.  Some  mammals,  like  the 
raccoons  and  wood-rats,  also  eat  them  ;  insects  suck  their 
juices,  and  the  carnivorous  slugs  prey  upon  one  another. 
Lastly,  man,  the  greatest  enemy  of  the  brute  creation,  em- 
ploys several  species  of  snails  for  culinary  purposes.  By 
the  Romans  they  were  esteemed  a  great  luxury,  and  por- 
tions of  plantations  were  set  apart  for  the  cultivation  of  the 
large,  edible  Helix  pomatia,  where  they  were  fattened  by 
the  thousand  upon  bran  sodden  in  wine.  From  Italy  this 
taste  spread  throughout  the  Old  "World,  and  colonies  of 
this  exotic  species,  survivors  of  classical  "  preserves,"  are 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  33 

yet  found  in  Great  Britain  where  the  Roman  encampments 
were.  They  are  still  regarded  as  a  delicacy  in  Italy  and 
France,  the  favorite  method  of  preparation  being  to  boil 
in  milk,  with  plenteous  seasoning.  Frank  Buckland  says 
that  several  of  the  larger  English  species  are  excellent  food 
for  hungry  people,  and  recommends  them  either  boiled  in 
milk,  or,  in  winter,  raw,  after  soaking  for  an  hour  in  salt 
and  water.  Some  of  the  French  restaurants  in  London 
have  them  placed  regularly  upon  their  bills  of  fare.  Thou- 
sands are  collected  annually  and  sent  to  London  as  food  for 
cage-birds.  Dr.  Edward  Gray  stated,  a  few  years  ago,  that 
immense  quantities  were  shipped  alive  to  the  United  States 
"  as  delicacies ;"  but  I  am  inclined  to  consider  this  an  exag- 
geration growing  out  of  the  fact  that,  among  our  fancy  gro- 
ceries "  a  few  jars  of  pickled  snails,  imported  from  Italy," 
figure  as  a  curiosity,  rather  than  something  needed,  for  the 
table.  The  same  author  records  that  the  glassmen  at  New- 
castle once  a  year  have  a  snail  feast,  collecting  the  animals 
in  the  fields  and  hedges  on  the  Sunday  before. 

Mr.  W.  G.  Binney,  for  whom  a  sirup  of  snails  was  pre- 
scribed by  two  regular  physicians  in  Paris  in  1863,  points 
out  how  old  is  the  belief  that  land  mollusks  possess  valua- 
ble medicinal  qualities.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  rudimen- 
tary shell  of  the  slug  acquired  a  high  rank  among  the  mi- 

3 


34:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

merous  bezoars  and  amulets  which  were  supposed  to  pro- 
tect the  body  from  evil  influences,  and  to  impart  health  and 
activity.  The  accounts  of  these  virtues,  copied  from  one 
author  to  another,  have  perpetuated  the  early  superstitions 
until  it  is  difficult  to  overcome  them  by  the  light  of  the 
present  day,  when,  even  in  England,  snails  are  supposed  to 
possess  a  useful  power  in  cases  of  lung  trouble.  A  full  re- 
lation of  all  the  absurdities  which  gained  credence  would 
form  a  curious  and  marvellous  page  in  the  history  of  cre- 
dulity. They  have,  also,  from  very  early  times,  been  used 
in  the  preparation  of  cosmetics;  and  no  longer  than  two 
or  three  centuries  ago  the  water  procured  from  them  by 
distillation  was  much  celebrated,  and  employed  by  ladies 
to  impart  whiteness  and  freshness  to  the  complexion. 
Finally,  I  hear  that  there  is  celebrated  in  Rome,  even  now, 
a  midsummer  festival,  upon  which  occasion  all  family  feuds 
may  be  made  up,  or  any  differences  between  friends  easily 
adjusted,  since  that  is  the  spirit  of  the  day ;  and  a  sign  or 
token  of  this  renewed  friendship  and  good-will  is  the  pres- 
ent of  a  snail  from  one  party  to  the  other,  or  an  exchange 
of  mollusks  between  them.  The  symbolism  and  virtue 
reside  in  the  alleged  amicable  influence  of  the  head  and 
" horns" — why,  perhaps  comparative  mythologists  may  be 
able  to  tell  us. 


IN  A   SNAILERY.  35 

In  this  country  no  such  fanciful  notions  have  ever  gained 
credence.  The  snails  are  too  habitually  hidden  to  attract 
the  attention  of  any  but  a  few ;  and  even  when  their  exist- 
ence is  known,  they  are  unfortunately  regarded  with  such 
a  disgust  as  would  preclude  any  acceptance  of  them,  either 
for  food  or  medicine. 

Yet  why  this  disgust  ?  Snails  are  of  ancient  race,  vast 
variety,  graceful  shape,  dignified  bearing,  industrious  and 
peaceful  habits,  edible  and  curative  properties;  quod  erat 
demonstrandum . 


II. 

FIRST-COMERS. 

THE  lengthening  of  the  days,  as  the  year  slowly  advances, 
brings  with  it  increased  longing  for  still  balmier  weather  to 
every  one  whose  pleasure  is  not  bound  within  the  narrow 
limits  of  the  opera  and  soiree.  To  the  lover  of  long  ram- 
bles in  the  woods  and  meadows,  or  of  lazy  boating  along 
some  placid  stream,  where  the  water-lilies  bow  to  let  him 
pass  and  buoyantly  rise  in  his  wake,  shaking  the  drops 
from  their  shining  fronds,  every  indication  of  approaching 
spring  is  eagerly  scanned,  and  is  hailed  with  delight.  The 
slow  decay  of  the  ice  in  the  ponds,  the  vivid  green  of  the 
aquatic  plants  disclosed  by  its  melting,  the  delicate  herbage 
hiding  under  the  sodden  leaves,  the  gummy  and  bursting 
buds,  all  presage  the  charms  of  reviving  nature.  Then  the 
sounds  awake.  The  frogs  bid  each  other  good-morning  af- 
ter their  long  sleep ;  the  lowing  of  calves  and  the  bleating 
of  lambs  resound  from  the  hill-sides;  the  tender  warble  of 
the  bluebird,  the  cheery  call  of  the  robin,  and  the  gurgle 


FIRST-COMERS.  37 

of  swollen  tirooks,  mingle  in  our  ears  as  we  pick  our  way 
along  the  muddy  paths ;  until,  some  bright  April  morning, 
we  discover  that  surly  Winter  is  gone,  and  coy  Spring  is 
shyly  waiting  for  us  to  bid  her  welcome. 

In  this  company  of  the  heralds  of  this  admirable  change 
of  the  seasons,  none  have  a  better  part  than  the  birds,  whose 
wings  bear  beauty  and  song.  Half  a  dozen  of  these  mes- 
sengers—  the  bluebird,  the  wren,  the  dove,  and  the  black- 
birds— are  especially  first-comers,  and  to  them  I  ask  atten- 
tion. The  song-sparrow  also  belongs  here,  by  good  right, 
but  he  enjoys  an  essay  all  to  himself  elsewhere. 

Among  the  very  earliest  are  the  familiar  bluebirds ;  in- 
deed, they  may  occasionally  be  found  all  winter  long  in 
sunny  fields.  By  All -fools -day  they  have  become  corn* 
mon,  and  are  seeking  their  mates,  which  are  soon  found. 
Meanwhile,  from  every  field,  and  about  the  yet  desolate 
gardens,  is  heard  the  bluebird's  cheery  voice.  It  is  a  hap- 
py, contented  warble,  and,  though  no  great  credit  belongs 
to  the  singer  as  a  musician,  his  tender  melody  is  among  the 
most  delightful  of  vernal  sounds.  There  is  an  ubiquity  or 
ventriloquistic  peculiarity  about  this  song — whether  due  to 
its  quality  or  to  the  capricious  breeze  upon  which  it  is  usu- 
ally borne,  I  do  not  know — which  tends  to  make  its  source 
indefinite.  You  may  hear  the  notes  on  a  bright  March 


38  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

morning,  but  cannot  find  their  pretty  author.  He  denies 
your  eyes  the  welcome  sight  of  him,  until  at  last  you  give 
up  the  search  only  to  discover  him  close  behind  you.  This 
unintended  ventriloquism  may  be  in  his  favor,  but  his  azure 
plumage  is  very  conspicuous  as  he  stands  on  a  tall  fence- 
rider  with  the  woods  for  a  background,  or  reconnoitres  the 
entrance  to  an  old  woodpecker's  hole  in  some  white  cotton- 
wood,  and  many  bluebirds  are  killed  by  the  small  hawks. 
Thoreau  said  that  he  carried  the  sky  on  his  back,  to  which 
John  Burroughs  added,  "and  the  earth  on  his  breast."  This 
describes  him  perfectly. 

The  bluebird  is  not  ambitious  in  his  flight,  never  emulat- 
ing the  lofty  journeys  of  the  pointed-winged  birds,  and  is 
rarely  seen  sixty  feet  above  the  surface.  He  loiters  about 
the  outskirts  of  the  woods,  flitting  from  stump  to  stump; 
delights  in  a  tract  of  newly-cleared  land ;  and  looks  no  far- 
ther when  he  discovers,  not  far  from  the  farm-house,  a 
group  of  charred  and  towering  trunks — monuments  of  a 
long-passed  fire  in  the  forest.  Next  to  that  he  loves  an 
aged  orchard.  In  both  places  the  attraction  is  mainly  the 
grubs,  worms,  and  insects  that  infest  dead  and  decaying 
woods,  and  upon  which  he  feeds.  To  such  a  spot  he  leads 
his  mate,  easily  to  be  distinguished  by  her  duller  plumage. 
Together  they  go  house-hunting.  It  is  not  long,  usually,  be- 


FIRST-COMERS.  39 

fore  they  are  suited ;  for  the  woodpeckers  have  been  there 
years  before  them,  chiselling  out  many  holes  for  themselves 
which  are  now  left  vacant ;  or  the  snapping  off  of  some  old 
limb  has  opened  the  way  to  a  snug  cavity  in  its  hollow 
interior.  Any  kind  of  a  cranny  seems  to  serve  in  a  pinch. 
I  have  known  them  to  build  in  a  broken  tin  water-spout 
under  the  eaves  of  a  house  for  want  of  a  better  place ;  al- 
though, no  doubt,  the  birds  exercise  a  decided  choice  when 
they  can.  The  tenement  determined  upon,  the  furnishing 
of  it  does  not  require  much  labor  or  contrivance.  The  birds 
bring  enough  of  a  peculiar  kind  of  soft  grass  which  turns 
reddish  brown  when  it  dries,  sometimes  mix  with  it  a  little 
hair,  and  thus  thickly  carpet  the  bottom  of  the  cavity.  That 
is  all.  The  eggs  are  laid  by  the  second  week  in  April,  and 
the  young  are  hatched  about  ten  days  after.  The  eggs  are 
five  in  number,  and  are  light  blue,  without  spots.  Once,  in 
ISTorthern  Ohio,  I  found  a  nestf ul  of  pearly-white  eggs,  and 
one  other  similar  case  has  come  to  my  knowledge.  They 
were  just  as  well  worth  sitting  on,  however,  as  five  blue 
eggs  would  have  been. 

The  bluebird  is  also  a  true  bird  of  the  garden,  taking  the 
place  of  England's  robin -redbreast  more  nearly  than  any 
other  bird  in  America.  It  is  no  trouble  to  have  them  twit- 
tering about  the  house  the  whole  summer  through.  The 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


negroes  at  the  South,  always  have  an  abundance  of  differ- 
ent birds  about  their  cabins  by  simply  hanging  up  empty 


gourds;  and  a  cigar-box  with  a  hole  in  it  is  all-sufficient. 
But  you  must  not  be  disappointed  if  the  house-wrens  ut- 
terly dispossess  the  bluebirds  of  the  houses  you  have  put 


FIRST-COMERS.  41 

tip,  for  thd  wrens  are  regular  buccaneers,  with  no  more 
heart  or  conscience  than  a  walnut ;  nevertheless,  the  blue- 
birds are  far  better  fighters  than  one  would  suspect  them 
to  be,  as  the  English  sparrow  has  learned  at  the  cost  of 
many  a  sore  spot. 

This  same  house-wren  is  so  well  known  that  I  need  only 
allude  to  him  ;  and  any  further  description  than  to  say  that 
lie  is  the  wee  brown  bird,  about  as  large  as  your  thumb, 
which  frequents  the  garden  bird-boxes  and  the  barn,  is  un- 
necessary. He  comes  early  and  stays  late.  He  makes  him- 
self at  home  immediately,  and  is  everywhere  present,  bus- 
tling about  outhouses  and  barns,  rapidly  building  his  nest  in 
the  most  insecure  and  unfrequented  places,  like  the  sleeve 
of  an  old  coat  left  in  the  barn,  or  a  lantern  hung  against 
the  woodshed ;  and,  if  it  is  repeatedly  pulled  down,  as  of- 
ten rebuilding  it,  literally  "pitching  into"  other  wrens,  and 
bluebirds,  and  swallows,  whom  he  considers  trespassers  on 
his  right  to  the  whole  garden,  and  fighting  so  audaciously 
and  persistently  as  nearly  always  to  come  off  victor;  squeak- 
ing in  and  out  of  every  crevice,  with  his  comical  tail  at  half- 
cock;  inquiring  into  every  other  living  thing's  business,  yet 
not  neglecting  his  own,  this  little  bobbing  bunch  of  brown 
excitement  is  the  very  spirit  of  impudence. 

The  wren   does  not  confine  himself  altogether  to  the 


42  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

garden,  however.  You  may  find  him  everywhere  in  the 
woods,  and  few  species  are  equal  to  this  in  the  number  of 
individuals.  An  old  stump  that  is  too  soft  for  the  wood- 
peckers, or  the  hollow,  broken  limb  of  a  tree  that  the  winds 
have  demolished,  is  his  chosen  home.  Into  a  hole  some- 
where he  stuffs  a  large  quantity  of  twigs,  some  of  them  of 
astonishing  size  when  wre  think  how  small  a  bird  handles 
them.  In  tlie  centre  of  this  mass  is  a  soft  chamber,  where- 
in six  or  seven  brick-dust-colored  eggs  are  hatched  late  in 
May.  It  is  a  nest  which  justifies  his  generic  name,  Trog- 
lodytes, and  so  fond  of  his  queer  den  is  he,  and  so  restlessly 
active,  that  when  his  proper  home  is  finished,  he  packs  full 
of  rubbish  half  the  crevices  in  the  vicinity,  out  of  a  sheer 
want  of  some  better  way  to  occupy  his  time  arid  ease  his 
energy. 

There  is  one  component  of  this  nest  which  is  also  used 
by  the  vireos  and  gnatcatchers— namely,  round  pellets  of  a 
white  cottony  substance,  the  nature  of  which  I  was  puzzled 
to  determine.  At  last  I  caught  the  birds  collecting  it,  and 
found  it  to  be  a  minute  fungus  which  covers  dead  twigs 
here  and  there  with  a  living  velvet  of  snowy  white.  It  is 
elastic  and  somewhat  viscous,  and  with  gossamer  serves  an 
obvious  purpose  in  such  a  nest  as  the  vireo's ;  but  why  the 
wrens  scatter  it  through  their  brush-pile  is  not  so  clear. 


FIRST-COMERS.  43 

One  of  my  pleasantest  memories  is  of  a  sparkling  April 
morning  in  1874,  at  Scott's  Landing,  a  little  railway-junc- 
tion on  the  Ohio  Elver.  It  was  bright  and  cold,  and  the 
wheezy  steamboats  passing  up  and  down  the  river  trailed 
from  their  tall  and  slender  stacks  great  golden  banners 
athwart  the  rising  sun.  The  birds  were  up  betimes.  Crows 
from  far  and  near  were  gathering  to  breakfast  at  the  banks 
of  the  river,  as  is  their  custom  at  seasons  of  high  water. 
The  crow  blackbirds — redundancy  of  title ! — were  moving  in 
small  flocks  about  some  newly  ploughed  ground,  smacking 
their  horny  lips  at  one  another  over  some  luscious,  luckless 
grub ;  and  their  cousins,  the  military  redwings,  were  in  the 
highest  glee.  Cardinals  are  the  natural  bird-feature  there ; 
and  their  bold  whistling  resounded  from  every  hill-side.  Out 
of  the  orchard  came  the  sharp  squeak  of  a  black-and-white 
creeper,  the  noisy  chatter  of  chipping -sparrows,  and  the 
dee-dee-dee  of  the  miniature  Southern  chickadees.  One  tree 
was  the  haunt  of  a  single  robin — rara  avis  in  that  locality 
— and  he  sang  loiid  and  long,  not  minding  his  loneliness. 
Bluebirds  were  not  plenty,  but  a  pair  of  them,  and  per- 
haps two  families,  inhabited  an  old  cherry-tree  so,  near 
to  the  railway  -  track  that  the  tops  of  the  passing  cars 
pushed  aside  the  boughs.  I  have  noticed  so  many  nests 
of  birds  built  in  close  proximity  to  railways  that  I  have 


44  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

thought  the  builders  exercised  a  distinct  preference  for 
the  situation,  as  making  them  safer  from  the  attack  of 
hawks. 

Not  an  uncommon  bird,  hopping  down  between  the  rails 
to  pick  up  the  grain  dropped  from  the  freight-trains,  was 
the  turtle-dove,  which  was  an  old  acquaintance  of  mine  in 
the  West,  but  which  is  rare  in  New  England.  They  were 
very  wary,  uttered  no  note,  and  came  with  the  silence  of 
ghosts.  If  I  only  stirred  when  they  were  near,  whir !  away 
went  my  doves,  straight  and  swift  as  an  arrow,  spreading 
their  white-edged  tails. 

A  portion  of  the  following  summer  I  spent  on  the  Little 
Kanawha,  and  many  a  day  was  I  entertained  by  the  notes 
of  the  turtle-dove  floating  down  from  a  hill-top  as  I  thread- 
ed my  way  through  the  woods.  Among  the  most  common 
of  birds  in  West  Virginia,  the  people  yet  regarded  it  with 
affection,  and  made  as  great  a  disturbance  if  one  was  shot 
as  they  would  at  the  shooting  of  a  house -pigeon.  They 
were  jealous  of  the  few  purple  martins  they  had  in  the 
same  degree.  Why  it  is  called  the  turtle-dove  I  do  not 
know.  Probably  because  of  its  kinship  with  the  turtle- 
dove of  Europe;  but  this  only  puts  the  difficulty  one  step 
farther  back.  Its  other  name  —  mourning-dove  —  is  more 
characteristic ;  for  its  song,  if  it  may  be  called  such,  is  a 


FIRST-COMERS.  45 

sobbing  refrain,  that,  tolling  from  afar,  recalls  the  echoing 
of  a  distant  church-bell — 

"Swinging  slow  with  sullen  roar." 

The  cry  is  frequently  mistaken  for  that  of  some  owl ; 
but  the  dove  does  not  sing  at  night,  or  some  nervous  peo- 
ple would  grow  wild.  If  it  did,  it  would  take  character 
as  a  banshee,  and  become  a  bird  of  evil  omen.  On  the 
contrary,  its  coming  in  early  spring  is  now  welcomed  as 
one  of  the  first  signs  of  the  sure  advance  of  the  season, 
and  its  plaintive  note  is  only  a  minor-tone,  mingling  har- 
moniously with  the  livelier  notes  of  other  denizens  of  the 
woods. 

The  mourning-doves  pair  very  early,  and  are  as  affection- 
ate in  their  attachments  as  are  most  of  the  doves  and  pig- 
eons, whose  "  billings  and  cooings "  have  become  exagger- 
ated into  a  proverb  to  express  the  first  enthusiasm  of  young 
love.  Their  home  is  an  indifferent  affair,  but  perhaps  its 
very  scantiness  may  serve  to  benefit  its  owners  by  making 
it  less  conspicuous  among  the  almost  leafless  branches,  where 
it  is  likely  to  be  placed  early  in  the  season.  The  nest  is  not 
by  any  means  always  in  a  tree,  although  a  snug  thorn-apple 
offers  temptations  that  few  doves  can  resist ;  but  it  may  be 
put  on  the  flat  top  of  a  stump,  on  the  protruding  end  of  a 


4:6  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

fence-rail,  or  the  eggs  may  sometimes  be  laid  on  the  ruins 
of  a  last  year's  nest,  as  in  a  case  I  once  noticed  where  three 
dove's  eggs  were  laid  in  an  old  cat-bird's  nest,  around  the 
ruins  of  which  the  snow  wras  yet  unmelted.  On  the  plains 
I  have  seen  many  times  how  these  birds  scratch  a  few  grass- 
stalks  together  on  the  ground,  for  want  of  a  better  place. 
It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  pigeons  have  been  easi- 
ly domesticated,  when  they  accommodate  themselves  so 
readily  to  any  exigency  in  rearing  their  young.  However 
placed,  this  nest  is  a  slight  platform  of  twigs,  just  suffi- 
cient to  hold  the  two  or  three  eggs ;  or,  if  the  top  of  a 
stump,  or  the  ground,  be  chosen  as  the  site,  it  is  not  un- 
common to  find  simply  a  little  rim,  like  a  tinker's  dam, 
built  around  the  eggs,  which  themselves  rest  on  the  bare 
surface  of  the  stump. 

Another  early  and  familiar  visitor  to  the  gardens  is  the 
chipping  sparrow,  or  "  chippy,"  its  delicate  voice  coming  to 
us  from  among  the  first  blossoms  of  the  lilac.  It  is  also 
called  the  "  hair-bird,"  because  its  nest  is  composed  mainly 
of  horse -hairs  twined  into  a  flat  little  basket  of  slender 
twigs  and  rootlets.  But  this  is  not  a  good  name ;  the  scien- 
tific designation,  "social  sparrow,"  fits  the  bird  better,  for 
it  seeks  to  be  social  with  man,  and  places  its  home  wiiere 
every  boy  and  girl  of  the  family  may  look  in  at  the  front 


FIRST-COMERS.  47 

door.  The  eggs  are  pea-green,  scrawled,  as  though  by  a  pen, 
with  black  lines  and  dots. 

The  food  of  the  chippy  during  the  spring  and  summer 
consists  largely  of  small  insects,  and  he  searches  carefully 
through  the  blossoming  trees  for  the  minute  bugs  that  in- 
fest the  leaves  and  flowers,  occasionally  nipping  off  the  sweet 
and  tender  stamens  of  the  apple  and  cherry  blossoms,  or 
taking  wree  bites  out  of  the  early  currants.  He  flits  quietly 
and  busily  all  over  the  shrubbery,  an  image  of  a  happy  and 
contented  little  workman,  tr  a -la -la- ing  in  a  fine  trilling 
voice,  that  would  be  shrill  were  it  not  so  sweet,  an  aria 
from  some  bright  bird-opera. 

The  chippy  is  so  easily  watched  that  I  do  not  propose  to 
tell  all  I  have  learned  about  it,  and  thus  rob  a  reader  of  the 
pleasure  of  learning  its  beautiful  ways  for  himself.  You 
will  not  find  it  difficult  to  become  acquainted  with  these 
pigmy  sparrows  after  you  have  recognized  their  chestnut 
caps  among  your  rose-bushes.  You  will  see,  also,  that  you 
may  tame  them  and  teach  them  to  come  to  you  for  crumbs. 
They  are  almost  the  only  birds  that  the  insolent  English 
sparrows  will  be  friendly  toward ;  and  they  are  wonder- 
fully devoted  to  their  young :  but  I  am  forgetting  that  the 
reader  wras  to  find  all  this  out  for  himself! 

I  have  in  mind  the  delta  of  a  river  whose  shores  are  so 


48  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

level  that  it  is  a  constant  struggle  whether  land  or  water 
shall  prevail.  The  river  finds  its  way  to  the  broad  harbor 
through  a  dozen  or  more  channels,  between  which  are  low 
islands  overgrown  with  great  trees  burdened  and  festooned 
with  grape-vines  and  rnoss,  and  tangled  with  thickets  and 
rank  fern-brakes,  or  growths  of  wild  rice  and  luxuriant  wa- 
ter-weeds so  dense  and  tall  as  to  be  impenetrable  even  to  a 
canoe.  Here  blooms  the  magnificent  lotus  (Ndumbium 
luteum),  with  its  corolla  as  large  as  your  hat  and  its  leaf 
half  a  boat-length  broad — great  banks  of  it,  giving  out  a 
faint,  sweet,  soporific,  almost  intoxicating  odor. 

Curious  sounds  reach  you  as  you  thread  the  mazes  of  the 
swamp.  The  water  boils  up  from  the  oozy  bottom,  and  the 
bubbles  break  at  the  surface  with  a  faint,  lisping  sound ; 
the  reeds  softly  rattle  against  one  another  like  the  rustle  of 
heavy  silks,  and  you  can  hear  the  lily-pads  and  deeply-an- 
chored stems  of  the  water-weeds  rubbing  against  one  an- 
other. More  articulate  noises  strike  your  ear — the  sharp- 
clucking  lectures  on  propriety  of  the  mud-hen  to  its  young ; 
the  ^rek-Ttek-Ttek)  coaz-coaz  of  the  frog ;  the  splash  of  a  tum- 
bling turtle ;  the  rushing  of  a  flock  of  startled  ducks  rising 
on  swift  wings ;  the  sprightly,  contagious  laughter  of  those 
little  elves,  the  marsh-wrens,  teetering  on  the  elastic  leaves 
of  the  cat-tails. 


FIRST-COMERS.  49 

Never  absent  from  such  a  reedy  picture  are  the  black- 
birds, especially  the  redwing  ( Agelceus phmniceus),  whose  fa- 
vorite resort  is  where  the  rushes  grow  most  densely,  among 
which  he  places  his  nest.  The  little  swales  in  the  meadows, 
also,  where  tufts  of  rank  grass  flourish  upon  islands  formed 
by  the  roots  of  many  previous  years'  growth,  and  stunted 
alders  and  cranberry-bushes  shade  the  black  water,  are  near- 
ly always  sure  to  be  the  home  of  a  few  pairs,  so  that  they 
become  well  known  to  everybody,  whether  inland  or  along- 
shore, as  soon  as  the  ice  melts.  Such  extensive  marshes  as  I 
have  just  described  are,  however,  the  great  centres  of  black- 
bird population,  where  they  breed,  where  they  collect  in 
great  hordes  of  young  and  old  as  the  end  of  the  season  ap- 
proaches, and  whence  they  repair  to  the  neighboring  fields 
of  Indian-corn  to  tear  open  the  husks  and  pick  the  succu- 
lent kernels.  In  September  I  have  seen  them  literally  in 
tens  of  thousands  wheeling  about  the  inundated  wild-rice 
fields  bounding  the  western  end  of  Lake  Erie,  their  black 
backs  and  gay  red  epaulets  glistening  in  the  sun  "  like  an 
army  with  banners."  The  Canadian  voyageurs  call  them 
"  officer-birds,"  and  the  impression  of  an  army  before  him 
is  always  strong  upon  the  beholder  as  he  gazes  at  these  pro- 
digious flocks  in  autumn.  It  is  extremely  interesting  to 
watch  the  swift  evolutions  of  their  crowded  ranks,  and  ob- 

4 


50  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

serve  the  regularity  and  concert  of  action  which  governs 
the  movements  of  the  splendidly  uniformed  birds. 

The  redwings  are  among  the  earliest  of  our  vernal  visit- 
ors, and  south  of  the  Ohio  River  and  Washington  may  be 
found  all  through  the  winter.  Their  loud  and  rollicking 
spring  note  is  one  of  the  most  invigorating  sounds  in  nature, 
and  most  typical  of  the  reviving  year.  Conk-quiree!  conk- 
quiree!  sings  out  the  male,  as  though  he  knew  a  good  story 
if  only  he  had  a  mind  to  tell  it ;  and  then  adds  cliuck  !  as 
though  he  thought  it  of  no  use  to  try  to  interest  you  in  it, 
and  that  he  had  been  indiscreet  in  betraying  an  enthusiasm 
beneath  his  dignity  over  a  matter  beyond  your  appreciation. 
His  plain  brown  mate  immediately  says  chuck !  too,  quite 
agreeing  with  her  lord  and  master  that  it  is  not  best  to 
waste  their  confidence  upon  you. 

The  centre  of  all  their  interest  is  the  compact,  tight  bas- 
ket woven  of  wet  grass-blades  and  split  rush-leaves  which  is. 
supported  among  the  reeds  or  rests  on  a  tussock  of  wire- 
grass  surrounded  by  water.  It  is  a  model  nest,  and  they 
understand  so  well  the  labor  it  cost  that  they  are  mightily 
jealous  of  harm  coming  to  it.  The  eggs  are  five  in  num- 
ber, of  a  faded  blue  tint,  marbled,  streaked  and  spotted 
with  leather-color  and  black,  in  shape  rather  elongated  and 
pointed.  The  fledglings  are  abroad  about  the  1st  of  June, 


FIRST-COMERS.  51 

when  the  parents  proceed  to  the  production  of  another 
brood. 

These  blackbirds  have  the  bump  of  domesticity  largely 
developed,  and  if  their  household  is  disturbed  they  make  a 
terrible  fuss,  calling  upon  all  nature  to  witness  their  sor- 
row and  execrate  the  wretch  that  is  violating  their  privacy. 

During  all  the  spring  season,  and  particularly  while  the 
young  are  being  provided  for,  the  redwings  subsist  almost 
exclusively  on  wrorms,  grubs,  caterpillars,  and  a  great  varie- 
ty of  such  sluggish  insects,  and  their  voracious  larvae,  as 
do  damage  to  the  roots  and  early  sprouts  of  whatever  the 
farmer  plants ;  nor  do  they  abandon  this  diet  until  the  ripen- 
ing of  the  wild -rice  and  maize  in  the  fall.  "For  these 
vermin,"  says  Wilson,  "the  starlings  search  with  great  dili- 
gence in  the  ground,  at  the  roots  of  plants  in  orchards  and 
meadows,  as  well  as  among  buds,  leaves,  and  blossoms;  and 
from  their  known  voracity  the  multitudes  of  these  insects 
which  they  destroy  must  be  immense.  Let  me  illustrate 
this  fact  by  a  short  computation :  If  wre  suppose  each  bird 
on  an  average  to  devour  fifty  of  these  larvae  in  a  day  (a 
very  moderate  allowance),  a  single  pair  in  four  months,  the 
usual  time  such  food  is  sought  after,  will  devour  upward  of 
12,000.  It  is  believed  that  not  less  than  a  million  pairs  of 
these  birds  are  distributed  over  the  whole  extent  of  the 


52  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

United  States  in  summer,  whose  food,  being  nearly  the 
same,  would  swell  the  amount  of  vermin  destroyed  to 
12,000,000,000.  But  the  number  of  young  birds  may  be 
fairly  estimated  at  double  that  of  their  parents;  and  as 
these  are  constantly  fed  on  larvae  for  three  weeks,  making 
only  the  same  allowance  for  them  as  for  the  older  ones, 
their  share  would  amount  to  42,000,000,000,  making  a 
grand  total  of  54,000,000,000  of  noxious  insects  destroyed 
in  the  space  of  four  months  by  this  single  species !  The 
combined  ravages  of  such  a  hideous  host  of  vermin  would 
be  sufficient  to  spread  famine  and  desolation  over  a  wide 
extent  of  the  richest,  best-cultivated  country  on  the  earth." 

The  yellow-headed  blackbird,  a  kinsman  of  larger  size, 
belongs  properly  north-west  of  Lake  Superior,  but  frequent- 
ly gets  into  Michigan  and  Illinois.  The  bright  yellow  head 
and  neck  make  it  very  noticeable  if  seen.  Its  habits  are 
essentially  those  of  the  redwing. 

We  have  another  set  of  blackbirds  in  the  Atlantic  States, 
of  greater  size  than  the  Agelcei,  commonly  known  as  "crow  " 
blackbirds,  but  called  grakles  in  the  books.  There  are  sev- 
eral species,  but  none  are  greatly  different  from  that  too- 
common  pest  of  our  cornfields,  the  purple  grakle. 

The  real  home  of  the  grakles,  although  along  the  edges  of 
the  swamps,  is  not  among  the  reeds  where  the  redwing  and 


FIRST-COMERS.  53 

bobolink  sit  and  swing,  but  rather  in  the  bushes  and  trees 
skirting  the  muddy  shores.  They  build  their  nests  in  a  va- 
riety of  positions,  but  usually  a  convenient  fork  in  an  alder- 
bush  is  chosen,  twenty  or  thirty  pairs  often  dwelling  within 
a  radius  of  a  hundred  feet.  The  nest  is  a  rude,  strong  affair 
of  sticks  and  coarse  grass-stalks  lined  with  finer  grass,  and 
looks  very  bulky  and  rough  beside  the  neat  structure  of  the 
redwing ;  which  illustrates  how  much  better  a  result  can  be 
produced  by  an  artistic  use  of  the  same  material.  In  the 
case  of  these,  as  well  as  the  redwinged  blackbirds,  however, 
the  female  does  not  wear  the  jetty,  iridescent  coat  which 
adorns  the  head  of  the  family,  and  reflects  the  sunlight  in  a 
thousand  prismatic  tints,  but  hides  herself  and  the  home  she 
cares  for  by  affecting  a  dull,  brown-black,  streaked  suit,  as- 
similating her  closely  with  the  surrounding  objects.  This 
protective  coloration  of  plumage  is  possessed  by  the  females 
of  many  species  of  birds,  which  would  be  very  conspicuous, 
and  of  course  greatly  liable  to  danger  while  incubating  their 
eggs,  if  they  wore  the  bright  tints  of  the  males.  The  tana- 
ger  and  indigo-bird  afford  prominent  examples.  Sometimes 
the  crow  blackbirds  make  their  homes  at  a  distance  from 
the  water,  and  occasionally  they  choose  odd  places,  such  as 
the  tops  of  tall  pine-trees,  the  spires  of  churches,  martin- 
boxes  in  gardens,  and  holes  in  trees.  The  latter  situation  is 


54:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

one  which  the  bronzed  grakle  of  the  Mississippi  valley  (var. 
ceneus)  especially  makes  use  of. 

Crow  blackbirds'  eggs  are  among  the  first  on  every  boy's 
string,  and  until  he  gains  experience  the  young  collector 
supposes  he  has  almost  as  many  different  species  represent- 
ed as  he  has  specimens,  so  much  do  they  differ,  even  in  the 
same  nestful,  in  respect  to  color,  shape,  and  size.  Their 
length  averages  about  1.25  by  .90  of  an  inch,  but  some  are 
long,  slender,  and  pointed,  while  others  are  round,  fat,  and 
blunt  at  both  ends.  The  ground  color  may  be  any  shade  of 
dirty  white,  light  blue,  greenish,  or  olive  brown  ;  the  mark- 
ings consist  of  sharply-defined  spots  and  confused  blotches, 
scratches,  and  straggling  lines  of  obscure  colors,  from  blue- 
black  to  lilac  and  rusty  brown  —  sometimes  scantily "  and 
prettily  marbled  upon  the  surface  of  the  egg,  and  some- 
times painted  on  so  thick  as  to  wholly  conceal  the  ground 
color. 

The  crow  blackbirds  are  in  the  advance-guard  of  the  re- 
turning hosts  of  northward  bound  migrants,  making  their 
appearance  in  small  scattering  flocks,  and  announcing  their 
presence  by  loud  smacks  frequently  repeated.  They  obtain 
most  of  their  food  from  the  ground,  and  walk  about  with 
great  liveliness,  scratching  up  the  leaves,  turning  over  chips, 
and  poking  about  the  pastures  for  insects  and  seeds  softened 


FIRST-COMERS.  55 

by  the  spring  rains.  Their  destruction  of  insects — especial- 
ly during  May,  when  their  young  are  in  the  nest — is  enor- 
mous; yet  their  forays  upon  the  cornfields,  I  fear,  overbal- 
ance the  good  done  the  fanner  by  putting  an  end  to  grubs 
noxious  to  his  crops. 

"  The  depredations  committed  by  these  birds  are  almost 
wholly  on  Indian-corn  at  different  stages.  As  soon  as  its 
blades  appear  above  the  ground  after  it  has  been  planted, 
the  grakles  descend  upon  the  fields,  pull  up  the  tender  plant 
and  devour  the  seeds,  scattering  the  green  blades  around. 
It  is  of  little  use  to  attempt  to  drive  them  away  with  a  gun: 
they  only  fly  from  one  part  of  the  field  to  another.  And 
again,  as  soon  as  the  tender  corn  has  formed,  these  flocks, 
now.  replenished  by  the  young  of  the  year,  once  more 
ssvarin  in  the  cornfields,  tear  off  the  husks,  and  devour  the 
tender  grains."  Wilson  saw  fields  in  which  more  than  half 
the  corn  was  thus  ruined. 

These  birds  winter  in  immense  numbers  in  the  lower 
parts  of  Virginia,  North  and  South  Carolina,  and  Georgia, 
sometimes  forming  one  congregated  multitude  of  several 
hundred  thousand.  On  one  occasion  Wilson  met,  on  the 
banks  of  the  Eoanoke,  on  the  20th  of  January,  one  of  these 
prodigious  armies  of  crow  blackbirds.  They  arose,  he  states, 
from  the  surrounding  fields  with  a  noise  like  thunder,  and, 


56  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

descending  on  the  length  of  the  road  before  him,  they  cov- 
ered it  arid  the  fences  completely  with  black:  when  they 
again  rose,  arid  after  a  few  evolutions  descended  on  the 
skirts  of  the  high -timbered  woods,  they  produced  a  most 
singular  and  striking  effect.  Whole  trees,  for  a  considerable 
extent,  from  the  top  to  the  lowest  branches,  seemed  as  if 
hung  with  mourning.  Their  notes  and  screaming,  he  adds, 
seemed  all  the  while  like  the  distant  sounds  of  a  great  cata- 
ract, but  in  a  musical  cadence.  This  is  a  scene  which  may 
be  paralleled  every  autumn  in  the  grain  districts  of  the 
West  and  South. 


III. 

WILD   MICE. 

When  every  stream  in  its  pent-house 

Goes  gurgling  on  its  way, 
And  in  his  gallery  the  mouse 

Nibbleth  the  meadow  hay; 

Methinks  the  summer  still  is  nigh, 

And  lurketh  underneath, 
As  that  same  meadow-mouse  doth  lie 

Snug  in  that  last  year's  heath. 

THOREAU. 

WALKING  about  the  fields,  I  come  upon  little  pathways 
as  plain  as  Indian  trails,  which  lead  in  and  out  among  the 
grass  and  weed-stalks,  under  Gothic  arches  the  bending  tops 
of  the  flowering  grasses  make,  like  roads  for  the  tiny  chariots 
of  Queen  Mab.  These  curious  little  paths  branching  here 
and  there,  and  crossing  one  another  in  all  directions,  are  the 
runways  of  the  field-rnice,  along  which  they  go,  mostly  after 
sunset,  to  visit  one  another  or  bring  home  their  plunder ; 
for  the  thieving  little  gray-coats  of  our  cupboards,  whose 


58 


FRIEND 8  WORTH  KNOWING. 


.TIIK  HOUSE-MOUSE. 


bright  eyes  glance  at  us  from  behind  the  cheese-box,  and 
who  whisk  away,  down  some  un  thought -of  hole,  learned 
their  naughty  tricks  from  their  many  out -door  cousins, 
whom  we  may  forgive  on  the  plea  of  their  not  knowing 
any  better.  Suppose  I  tell  you  about  some  of  these  same 
cousins  who  live  in  the  woods  and  fields  of  the  Northern 
half  of  the  United  States  ? 


WILD  MICK  59 

If  you  take  the  o  and  the  e  out  of  "  mouse,"  you  have 
left  -muS)  which  is  the  Latin  word  for  mouse ;  but  instead 
of  saying  "  mousey,"  a  Roman  girl  would  have  said  muscu- 
lus.  Put  the  two  together,  and  you  have  'Mus  musculus, 
the  name  we  write  when  we  want  every  person,  whether  he 
understands  our  language  or  not,  to  know  that  wTe  mean  the 
common  house-mouse,  for  all  the  world  is  supposed  to  knowT 
something  of  Latin.  This  little  plague  was  originally  a  na- 
tive of  some  Eastern  country,  but  has  now  spread  all  over 
the  world,  forgetting  where  he  really  does  belong.  Some- 
times, in  this  country,  he  forsakes  the  houses  and  takes  up  a 
wild  life  in  the  woods. 

Coming  now  to  our  true  field  -  mice,  there  is  first  one 
which,  to  distinguish  it  from  Old  World  kinds,  is  called  in 
the  books  by  Greek  words  which  mean  the  "white-footed 
Western  mouse"  —  Hesperomys  leucopus  —  a  very  good 
name.  A  second  sort  is  generally  found  in  meadows 
through  which  brooks  wander;  and  its  Latin  name,  Arm- 
cola  riparius,  just  tells  the  whole  story  in  two  words; 
it  is  the  "  meadow  -mouse."  The  third  and  last  sort  of 
wild  mouse  in  Eastern  America  was  first  noticed  near 
Hudson's  Bay,  and,  being  a  great  jumper,  received  the 
name  of  the  "  Hudsonian  jumping-mouse  " — Jaculus  hud- 
sonius. 


60  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

These  four  mice  differ  in  shape,  color,  size,  and  habits,  and 
of  the  second  and  third  there  are  several  varieties  in  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  country.  The  soft,  brownish-gray  coat  of 
the  house-mouse  you  know  very  well ;  or,  if  you  do  not, 
take  the  next  one  you  catch  and  look  'at  it  closely.  It  is  as 
clean  as  your  pet  squirrel,  and  just  as  pretty.  See  how 
dainty  are  the  little  feet,  how  keen  the  black  beads  of  eyes, 
how  sharp  and  white  the  fine  small  teeth,  how  delicate  the 
pencillings  of  the  fur ! 

Prettiest  of  all  is  the  long-legged  jumping-mouse.  If  you 
should  look  at  a  kangaroo  through  the  wrong  end  of  a  tele- 
scope, you  would  have  a  very  fair  idea  of  our  little  friend's 
form,  with  hind-legs  and  feet  very  long  and  slender,  and 
fore-legs  very  short ;  so  that  when  he  sits  up  they  seem  like 
little  paws  held  before  him  in  a  coquettish  way.  His  tail 
is  often  twice  the  length  of  his  body,  and  is  tipped  with  a 
brush  of  long  hairs.  He  has  a  knowing  look  in  his  face, 
with  its  upright,  furry  ears  and  bright  eyes.  Being  dark- 
brown  above,  yellowish-brown  on  the  sides,  and  white  un- 
derneath, with  white  stockings,  he  makes  a  gay  figure 
among  his  more  soberly  dressed  companions.  Various 
names  are  given  him  ;  such  as  the  deer-mouse,  wood-mouse, 
jumping  wood-mouse,  and  others. 

The  white-foot  is  somewhat  larger  than  the  house-mouse ; 


IS 


WILD  MICE.  63 

being  about  three  inches  long.  It  has  a  lithe,  slender  form, 
and  quick  movement ;  its  eyes  are  large  and  prominent,  its 
nose  sharp,  and  its  ears  high,  round,  and  thin.  The  fore-feet 
are  hardly  half  as  long  as  the  hinder  ones,  and  the  tail  is  as 
long  as,  or  longer  than,  the  body,  and  covered  with  close 
hairs.  The  fur  is  soft,  dense,  and  glossy,  reddish  -  brown 
above  and  white  below,  while  the  feet  are  all  white. 

The  most  ill -looking  of  the  lot  is  the  meadow-mouse, 
which  reminds  me  of  a  miniature  bear.  Its  coat  is  dirty 
brownish-black,  not  even  turning  white  in  winter;  its  head 
is  short,  and  its  nose  blunt ;  all  its  four  feet  are  short,  and 
its  tail  is  a  mere  stump,  scarcely  long  enough  to  reach  the 
ground.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  very  interesting  mouse,  and 
able  to  make  an  immense  deal  of  trouble. 

In  general  habits  the  three  wild  ones  are  pretty  much 
alike,  though  some  prefer  dry,  while  others  choose  wet, 
ground;  some  keep  chiefly  in  the  woods,  others  on  the 
prairies,  and  so  on.  All  the  species  burrow  more  or  less, 
and  some  build  elaborate  nests.  Their  voices  are  fine,  low, 
and  squeaking,  but  the  meadow-mouse  is  a  great  chatterbox, 
and  the  white-foot  has  been  known  more  than  once  really 
to  sing  tunes  of  his  own  very  nicely.  Each  one  manifests 
immense  courage  in  defending  its  young  against  harm  ;  but 
I  believe  only  the  meadow-mice  are  accused  of  being  really 


64:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ferocious,  and  of  waging  battles  constantly  among  them- 
selves. Their  food  is  the  tender  stems  of  young  grasses 
and  herbs,  seeds,  nuts,  roots,  and  bark,  and  they  lay  up 
stores  of  food  for  the  winter,  since  none  become  torpid  at 
that  season,  as  is  the  habit  of  the  woodchuck  and  chip- 
monk,  except  the  jumping-mouse.  This  fellow,  during  cold 
weather,  curls  up  in  his  soft  grass  blankets  underground, 
wraps  his  long  tail  tightly  about  him,  and  becomes  dead  to 
all  outward  things  until  the  warmth  of  spring  revives  him, 
which  is  certainly  an  easy  and  economical  way  to  get 
through  the  winter!  They  also  eat  insects,  old  and  young, 
particularly  such  kinds  as  are  hatched  underground  or  in 
the  loose  wood  of  rotten  stumps ;  but  their  main  subsist- 
ence is  seeds  and  bark,  in  getting  which  they  do  a  vast  deal 
of  damage  to  plants  and  young  fruit-trees  with  those  sharp 
front  teeth  of  theirs. 

The  field-mice  make  snug  beds  in  old  stumps,  under  logs, 
inside  stacks  of  corn,  and  bundles  of  straw;  dig  out  gal- 
leries below  the  grass  roots ;  occupy  the  abandoned  nests  of 
birds  and  the  holes  made  by  other  animals  ;  and  even  weave 
nests  of  their  own  in  weeds  and  bushes.  They  live  well  in 
captivity,  and  you  can  easily  see  them  at  work  if  you  sup- 
ply materials. 

In  tearing  down  old  buildings  the  carpenters  often  find 


WILD  MICE.  65 

between  the  walls  a  lot  of  pieces  of  paper,  bits  of  cloth, 
sticks,  fur,  and  such  stuff,  forming  a  great  bale,  and  know 
that  it  was  once  the  home  of  a  house-mouse.  You  have 
heard  various  anecdotes  of  how  a  shopkeeper  misses  small 
pieces  of  money  from  his  till,  and  suspects  his  clerk  of  tak- 
ing it;  how  the  clerk  is  a  poor  boy  who  is  supporting  a 
widowed  mother,  or  a  sister  at  school,  and  the  kind-hearted 
shopkeeper  shuts  his  eyes  to  his  suspicions,  and  waits  for 
more  and  more  proof  before  being  convinced  that  his  young 
clerk  is  the  thief ;  but,  as  the  money  keeps  disappearing, 
at  last  he  must  accuse  the  clerk  of  taking  it.  Then  the 
story  tells  how,  in  spite  of  the  boy's  vehement  and  tear- 
ful denial,  a  policeman  is  called  in  to  arrest  him,  and  when 
everything  has  been  searched  to  no  purpose,  and  he  is 
about  being  taken  to  the  police-station,  how,  away  back  in  a 
corner  is  discovered  a  mouse's  nest  made  of  stolen  pieces 
of  ragged  currency — ten,  twenty-five,  and  fifty-cent  pieces. 
Then  everybody  is  happy  again,  and  the  story  ends  with  a 
capital  moral ! 

More  than  one  such  stolen  house  the  mice  have  really 
built,  and  sometimes  their  work  has  destroyed  half  a  hun- 
dred dollars,  and  caused  no  end  of  heartaches.  Their  little 
teeth  are  not  to  be  despised,  I  assure  you.  I  believe  one  of 
the  most  disastrous  of  those  great  floods  which  in  past  years 

5 


66  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

have  swept  over  the  fertile  plains  of  Holland  was  caused  by 
mice  digging  through  the  thick  banks  of  earth,  called  dikes, 
which  had  been  piled  up  to  keep  the  sea  back.  In  this  case, 
of  course,  the  mice  lost  their  lives  by  their  misdeeds,  as  well 
as  the  people,  sharing  in  the  general  catastrophe.  They 
hardly  intended  this ;  but 

"The  best-laid  plans  o'  mice  and  men 
Gang  aft  agley." 

It  was  by  the  gnawing  of  a  ridiculous  little  mouse,  yon 
remember,  that  the  lion  in  the  fable  got  free  from  the  net 
in  which  the  king  of  beasts  found  himself  caught. 

Sometimes  the  house-mouse  goes  out  of  doors  to  live,  and 
forgets  his  civilization  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  wood- 
land species  occasionally  come  in  doors  and  grow  tame.  At 
the  fur-trading  posts  about  Hudson's  Bay  wild  mice  live  in 
the  traders'  houses;  and  Thoreau — the  poet,  naturalist,  and 
philosopher,  whom  all  the  animals  seemed  at  once  to  recog- 
nize as  their  friend — wrote  this  beautiful  story  of  how  a 
white-footed  mouse  made  friends  with  him  .when  he  lived 
all  alone  in  the  woods  by  Walden  Pond,  near  Concord, 
Massachusetts: 

"  The  mice  which  haunted  my  house  were  not  the  com- 
mon ones,  which  are  said  to  have  been  introduced  into  the 


TiJE    WlilTE-FOUTKD   MOUbE. 


WILD  MICE.  69 

country,  but  a  wild  native  kind  not  found  in  the  village.  I 
sent  one  to  a  distinguished  naturalist,  and  it  interested  him 
much.  When  I  was  building,  one  of  these  had  its  nest  un- 
derneath the  house,  and  before  I  had  laid  the  second  floor 
and  swept  out  the  shavings,  would  come  out  regularly  at 
lunch-time  and  pick  up  the  crumbs  at  my  feet.  It  probably 
had  never  seen  a  man  before ;  arid  it  soon  became  quite  fa- 
miliar, and  would  run  over  my  shoes  and  up  rny  clothes. 
It  could  readily  ascend  the  sides  of  the  room  by  short  im- 
pulses, like  a  squirrel,  which  it  resembled  in  its  motions. 
At  length,  as  I  leaned  my  elbow  on  the  bench  one  day,  it 
ran  up  my  clothes  and  along  rny  sleeve,  and  around  and 
around  the  table  which  held  my  dinner,  while  I  kept  the 
latter  close,  and  dodged  and  played  at  bo-peep  with  it ;  and 
when  at  last  I  held  still  a  piece  of  cheese  between  my 
thumb  and  finger,  it  came  and  nibbled  it,  sitting  in  my 
hand,  and  afterward  cleaned  its  face  and  paws  like  a  fly, 
and  walked  away." 

Mice  are  full  of  such  curiosity.  They  poke  their  noses 
into  all  sorts  of  places  where  there  is  a  prospect  of  some- 
thing to  eat,  and  sometimes,  failing  to  find  so  good  a  friend 
as  Mr.  Thoreau,  meet  the  fate  which  ought  to  be  the  end 
of  all  poking  of  noses  into  other  people's  affairs — they  get 
caught.  I  remember  one  such  case  which  Mr.  Frank 


70  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Buckland  has  related.  When  oysters  are  left  out  of  water 
for  any  length  of  time,  especially  in  hot  weather,  they  al- 
ways open  their  shells  a  little  way,  probably  seeking  a 
drink  of  water.  A  mouse  hunting  about  for  food  found 
such  an  oyster  in  the  larder,  and  put  his  head  in  to  nibble 
at  the  oyster's  beard ;  instantly  the  bivalve  shut  his  shells, 


T11E   MOUSE    AND   THE    OYSTER. 


and  held  them  together  so  tightly  by  his  strong  muscles 
that  the  poor  mouse  could  not  pull  his  head  out,  and  so 
died  of  suffocation.  Other  similar  cases  have  been  known. 
The  most  common  of  all  our  field-mice  is  the  short-tailed 
meadow-mouse,  the  Arvicola.  I  find  it  in  the  woods,  out 
on  the  prairies,  and  in  the  hay -fields.  In  summer  these  lit- 


WILD  MICK  71 

tie  creatures  inhabit  the  lo\v,  wet  meadows  in  great  num- 
bers. When  the  heavy  rains  of  autumn  drive  them  out, 
they  move  to  higher  and  drier  ground,  and  look  for  some 
hillock,  or  old  ant-hill,  under  which  to  dig  their  home.  In 
digging  they  scratch  rapidly  with  the  fore-feet  a  few  times, 
and  then  throw  back  the  earth  to  a  great  distance  with  the 
hind-feet,  frequently  loosening  the  dirt  with  their  teeth,  and 
pushing  it  aside  with  their  noses.  As  the  hole  growrs  deep- 
er (horizontally)  they  wrill  lie  on  their  backs  and  dig  over- 
head, every  little  while  backing  slowly  out  and  shoving  the 
loose  earth  to  the  entrance.  These  winter  burrows  are  only 
five  or  six  inches  below  the  surface,  and  sometimes  are  sim- 
ply hollowed  out  under  a  great  stone,  but  are  remarkable 
for  the  numerous  and  complicated  chambers  and  side  pas- 
sages of  which  they  are  composed.  In  one  of  the  largest 
rooms  of  this  subterranean  house  is  placed  their  winter  bed, 
formed  of  fine  dry  grasses.  Its  shape  and  size  are  about 
that  of  a  foot-ball,  with  only  a  small  cavity  in  the  centre, 
entered  through  a  hole  in  the  side,  and  they  creep  in  as  do 
Arctic  travellers  into  their  fur-bags. 

"Thou  saw  the  fields  laid  bare  an'  waste, 
An'  weary  winter  comin'  fast, 
An'  cosy  here,  beneath  the  blast 

Thou  thought  to  dwell." 


72  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Here  five  or  six  young  mice  are  born,  and  stay  until  the 
coming  of  warm  weather,  by  which  time  they  are  grown, 
and  go  out  to  take  care  of  themselves.  Sometimes  one  of 
them,  instead  of  hunting  up  a  wife  and  getting  a  home  of 
his  own,  will  wander  off  by  himself  and  live  alone  like  a 
hermit,  growing  crosser  as  he  grows  older. 

In  the  deepest  part  of  the  burrow  is  placed  their  store  of 
provisions.  Uncover  one  of  these  little  granaries  in  Novem- 
ber, before  the  owners  have  used  much  of  it,  and  you  might 
find  five  or  six  quarts  of  seeds,  roots,  and  small  nuts.  Out 
on  the  prairie  this  store  would  consist  chiefly  of  the  round 
tubers — like  very  small  potatoes-  -of  the  spike-flower,  a  few 
juicy  roots  of  some  other  wreeds  and  grasses,  bulbs  of  the 
wild  onion,  and  so  forth.  If  a  wheat  or  rye  patch  wras  near, 
there  would  be  quantities  of  grain ;  and  if  you  should  open 
a  nest  under  a  log  or  stump  in  the  woods,  you  might  dis- 
cover a  hundred  or  so  chestnuts,  beech -nuts,  and  acorns, 
nicely  shelled.  All  these  stores  are  carried  to  the  burrows, 
often  from  long  distances,  in  their  baggy  cheeks,  which  are 
a  mouse's  pockets,  and  they  work  with  immense  industry, 
knowing  just  when  to  gather  this  and  that  kind  of  food  for 
the  winter.  A  friend  of  mine,  who  had  a  farm  near  the 
Hudson  River,  had  a  nice  field  of  rye,  which  he  was  only 
waiting  a  day  or  two  longer  to  harvest  until  it  should  be 


WILD  MICE.  73 

quite  ready.  But  the  very  night  before  he  went  to  cut  it, 
the  mice  stole  a  large  portion  of  the  grain  and  carried  it  off 
to  their  nests  in  the  neighboring  woods.  Hunting  up  these 
nests  he  got  back  from  two  of  them  about  half  a  bushel  of 
rye,  which  was  perfectly  good.  Sometimes  they  build  nests 
in  the  russet  corn-shocks  left  standing  in  the  sere  October 
fields',  and  store  up  there  heaps  of  food,  although  there  may 
be  no  necessity,  so  firmly  fixed  in  their  minds  is  the  idea  of 
preparing  for  the  future.  But  they  eat  a  great  deal,  and 
their  stores  are  none  too  large  to  outlast  the  long,  dreary 
months,  when  the  ground  is  frozen  hard,  and  the  meadows 
are  swept  by  the  wintry  winds,  or  packed  under  a  blanket 
of  snow. 

The  English  field-mouse,  which  is  very  much  like  our 
own,  has  "a  sweet  tooth,"  and  searches  for  the  nests  of  the 
bumblebees  in  order  to  get  the  comb  arid  honey. 

The  Arvicola  and  Jaculus  seem  to  be  the  greatest  dig- 
gers, while  the  Hesperomys  prefers  a  home  above-ground, 
and  constructs  its  dwelling  much  like  the  squirrel's.  Some- 
times it  takes  up  its  abode  in  deserted  birds'-nests,  such  as 
those  of  the  cat -bird,  red -winged  blackbird,  wood- thrush, 
and  red-eyed  vireo.  A  cradle-nest  of  the  last-named  bird, 
which  had  been  thus  used  by  a  white -footed  mouse,  was 
found  toward  the  end  of  August,  1875,  on  the  border  of  a 


74  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

thick  forest  on  the  Blue  Kidge,  by  Mr.  Spencer  Trotter,  of 
Philadelphia.  This  nest,  which — second  tenant  and  all — is 
given  as  the  frontispiece,  hung  from  the  extremity  of  a 
young  tree  a  few  feel:  from  the  ground;  and  the  mouse 
had  completely  filled  the  inside  with  dry  grass,  leaving  only 
enough  room  to  squeeze  into  a  comfortable  bed  in  the  bot- 
tom. The  mouse  was  asleep  when  found,  as  is  its  habit  in 
the  daytime,  and  moved  away  rather  sluggishly. 

Not  long  ago,  I  received  a  pleasant  letter  from  Mr.  John 
Burroughs,  in  which  he  said :  "  The  other  day  I  found  the 
nest  of -the  white- footed  mouse.  Going  through  the  woods, 
I  paused  by  a  red  cedar,  the  top  of  which  had  been  broken 
off  and  lopped  over  till  it  touched  the  ground.  It  was  dry, 
and  formed  a  very  dense  mass.  I  touched  a  match  to  it  to 
see  it  burn,  when,  just  as  the  flames  were  creeping  up  into 
it,  out  jumped  or  tumbled  two  white-footed  mice,  and  made 
off  in  opposite  directions.  I  was  just  in  time  to  see  the 
nest  before  the  flames  caught  it — a  mass  of  fine  dry  grass, 
about  five  feet  from  the  ground,  in  the  thickest  part  of  the 
cedar  top."  This  was  in  the  Catskills. 

From  their  tunnels,  nests,  and  granaries,  innumerable  run- 
ways, such  as  I  spoke  of  before,  traverse  the  neighborhood, 
crossing  those  from  other  burrows,  and  forming  a  complete 
net-work  all  over  the  region.  The  mice  do  not  flock  to- 


WILD  MICE. 


75 


getlier  like  the  prairie  dogs,  but,  where  food  is  plenty, 
many  nests  will  often  be  found  closely  adjacent.  They 
are  sociable  little  folk,  and  no  doubt  enjoy  visiting  and 
gossiping  with  one  another.  The  little  paths  are  their 


LEA.VIKG  HOME. 


roadways  from  one  burrow  to  another,  and  from  the  place 
where  the  tenderest  grasses  grow  to  their  storehouses. 
These  tiny  roads  are  formed  by  gnawing  clean  away  the 
grass  stubble,  and  treading  the  earth  down  smooth ;  while 


76  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

the  heads  of  the  grasses  arching  over  on  each  side  conceal 
the  scampering  travellers  from  the  prying  eyes  of  owls, 
hawks,  and  butcher-birds,  ever  on  the  watch  for  them.  The 
mice  seem  fully  to  understand  their  danger,  cautiously  go- 
ing under  a  tuft  of  grass  or  a  large  leaf  instead  of  over  it, 
and  avoiding  bare  places.  In  winter  their  paths  are  tun- 
nelled under  the  snow,  so  that  they  are  out  of  sight ;  and 
they  always  have  several  means  of  escape  from  their  bur- 
rows. You  know  the  old  song  says, 

"  The  mouse  that  always  trusts  to  one  poor  hole, 
Can  never  be  a  mouse  of  any  soul." 

A  trotting,  gliding  motion  is  the  gait  of  the  Arvicola, 
but  the  white-foot  gallops  along,  jumping  small  objects,  and 
leaping  from  one  hillock  to  another,  while  the  kangaroo- 
mouse  springs  off  his  hind-feet,  and  progresses  in  a  series 
of  long  leaps,  which  carry  him  over  the  ground  like  a  race- 
horse. 

But  the  life  of  one  of  our  favorites  is  not  all  frisking 
about  under  the  fragrant  flowers,  or  digging  channels 
through  shining  sand  and  crystal  snow.  He  has  his  labor 
and  trials  and  trouble  like  the  rest  of  us.  If  "  a  man  mun 
be  eather  a  man  or  a  mouse,"  it  would  be  hard  choosing 
between  them,  so  far  as  an  easy  time  is  concerned !  The 


THE  FIGHT  WITH  THE   SNAKE. 


WILD  MICE.  79 

gathering  of  his  food,  and  the  building  of  his  house,  costs 
him  "  mony  a  weary  nibble,"  and  he  must  constantly  be  on 
the  alert,  for  dangers  haunt  him  on  every  side.  One  of  his 
enemies  is  the  snake,  all  the  larger  sorts  of  which  pounce 
upon  him  in  the  grass,  lie  in  wait  for  him  in  his  highway, 
or  steal  into  his  burrow  and  seize  his  helpless  young,  in 
spite  of  the  frantic  fighting  of  the  father,  and  the  stout 
attempts  of  the  mother  to  drag  her  little  ones  away  into 
safety.  A  gentleman  in  Illinois  once  saw  a  garter-snake 
pass  rapidly  by  with  a  young  meadow-mouse  in  its  mouth. 
Presently  an  old  meadow-mouse  came  out  of  the  tall  grass 
in  pursuit  of  the  snake,  which  she  finally  overtook  and  in- 
stantly attacked.  The  snake  stopped,  disgorged  its  prey, 
and  defended  itself  by  striking  at  its  assailant,  which  ap- 
peared to  be  beating  it,  when  both  animals  were  killed  by 
the  gentleman  watching.  I  am  sorry  the  incident  ended  so 
tragically.  The  courage  and  affection  of  the  little  mother 
deserved  a  better  reward,  and  even  the  garter-snake  was  en- 
titled to  some  sympathy. 

Probably  our  snakes  depend  more  upon  catching  mice 
than  upon  any  other  resource  for  their  daily  food,  and  they 
hunt  for  them  incessantly.  Most  of  the  mice  have  the  bad 
habit  of  being  abroad  mainly  at  night ;  so  have  the  snakes ; 
and  the  mice  thus  encounter  more  foes,  and  fall  an  easier 


80  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

prey,  than  if  they  deferred  their  ramblings  until  daylight. 
Being  out  nights  is  a  bad  practice !  The  prairie  rattle- 
snakes are  especially  fond  of  mice ;  minks,  weasels,  skunks, 
and  badgers  eat  as  many  as  they  can  catch,  and  this  proba- 
bly is  not  a  few ;  domestic  cats  hunt  them  eagerly,  seem- 
ing to  prefer  them  to  house-mice — no  doubt  they  are  more 
sweet  and  delicate ;  foxes  also  enjoy  them ;  dogs  and  wolves 
dig  them  out  of  their  burrows  and  devour  them ;  prairie 
fires  burn  multitudes  of  them,  and  farmer-boys  trap  them. 
But,  after  all,  perhaps  their  chief  foes  are  the  flesh-eating 
birds.  I  hardly  ever  take  a  walk  without  finding  the  re- 
mains of  an  owl's  or  hawk's  dinner  where  our  little  subject 
has  been  the  main  dish. 

We  have  in  this  country  two  black,  white,  and  gray  birds 
called  shrikes,  or  butcher-birds,  which  are  only  about  the 
size  of  robins,  but  are  very  strong,  brave,  and  noble  in  ap- 
pearance. These  shrikes  have  the  curious  habit  of  killing 
more  game  than  they  need,  and  hanging  it  up  on  thorns,  or 
lodging  it  in  a  crack  in  the  fence  or  the  crotch  of  a  tree. 
They  seem  to  hunt  just  for  the  fun  of  it,  and  kill  for  the 
sake  of  killing.  Now  their  chief  game  is  the  unhappy 
field-mouse;  and  in  Illinois  they  are  known  as  "mouse- 
birds."  They  never  seem  to  eat  much  of  the  flesh  of  their 
victims,  generally  only  pecking  their  brains  out,  but  murder 


WILD  MICE.  81 

an  enormous  number,  and  keep  up  the  slaughter  through 
the  whole  year;  for  when  the  loggerhead  shrike  retreats 
southward  in  the  autumn,  the  great  northern  shrike  comes 
from  British  America  to  supply  his  place  through  the  win- 
ter. Then  all  the  hawks,  from  the  nimble  little  sharp-shin- 
ned to  the  great  swooping  buzzard, -prey  upon  mice,  and 
in  winter  hover  day  after  day  over  the  knolls  where  they 
have  been  driven  by  floods  in  the  surrounding  lowlands, 
pouncing  upon  every  one  that  is  imprudent  enough  to 
show  his  black  eyes  above  ground.  As  for  the  marsh- 
hawk,  it  regularly  quarters  the  low  fields  like  a  harrier,  and 
.eats  little  but  mice.  The  owls,  too,  are  constantly  after 
them,  hunting  them  day  and  night,  on  the  prairies  and  in 
the  woods,  esteeming  them  fine  food  for  the  four  owlets  in 
the  hollow  tree  hard  by;  while  the  sand-hill  crane  and 
some  of  the  herons  make  a  regular  business  of  seeking  the 
underground  homes,  and  digging  out  the  timorous  fugitives 
with  their  pick-axe  beaks.  In  addition  to  all  the  rest,  the 
farmer  everywhere  persecutes  the  mouse,  as  a  pest  to  his, 
orchards  and  crops. 

Has  the  poor  little  animal,  then,  no  friends  whatever  ? 
Very  few,  except  his  own  endurance  and  cunning;  yet  he 
is  already  so  numerous,  and  increases  so  rapidly,  that  all  his 
enemies  have  not  been  able  to  rid  the  earth  of  him,  but 


82  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

only  to  keep  him  in  check,  and  thus  preserve  that  nice  bal- 
ance of  nature  in  which  consists  the  welfare  of  all. 

An  important  part  of  the  history  of  these  pretty  wild 
mice  would  be  untold  if  I  were  to  say  nothing  about  the 
mischief  they  do  to  the  farmer's  fields  and  fruit-trees. 
From  the  story  I  have  related  of  the  little  "  thieves  in  the 
night"  who  stole  my  friend's  rye,  and  of  their  underground 
stores,  you  may  guess  how  they  make  the  grain-fields  suffer. 
It  is  done  so  quietly  and  adroitly,  too,  that  few  are  ever 
caught  at  it,  and  much  of  the  blame  is  put  on  the  moles, 
squirrels,  arid  woodchucks  that  have  enough  sins  of  their 
own  to  answer  for.  The  meadow-mouse  of  Europe,  which 
is  very  like  our  own,  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  came  near 
causing  a  famine  in  parts  of  England,  ruining  the  crops 
before  they  could  get  fairly  started,  and  killing  almost  all 
the  young  trees  in  the  orchards  and  woods.  More  than 
30,000  of  the  little  rascals  were  trapped  in  one  month  in  a 
single  piece  of  forest,  besides  all  those  killed  by  animals. 
About  1875,  again,  a  similar  disaster  was  threatened  in 
Scotland,  where  millions  of  mice  appeared,  and  gnawed  off 
the  young  grass  at  the  root  jnst  when  it  should  have  been 
in  prime  condition  for  the  sheep ;  and  when  that  was  all 
gone  they  attacked  the  garden  vegetables.  The  people  lost 
vast  numbers  of  sheep  and  lambs  from  starvation,  and  thou- 


WILD  MICK  S3 

sands  of  dollars'  worth  of  growing  food  ;  but,  finally,  by  all 
together  waging  war  upon  them,  the  pests  were  partially 
killed  off.  The  mice  did  not  in  either  case  come  suddenly, 
but  had  been  increasing  steadily  for  years  previous,  because 
the  game-keepers  had  killed  so  many  of  the  "vermin"  (as 
owls,  hawks,  weasels,  snakes,  etc.,  are  wrongly  called),  which 
are  the  natural  enemies  of  the  mice,  and  keep  their  num- 
bers down.  Fanners  are  slow  to  learn  that  it  doesn't  pay 
to  kill  the  birds  or  rob  their  nests;  but  the  boys  and  girls 
ought  to  understand  this  truth  and  remember  it.  In  this 
country  the  greatest  mischief  done  by  the  field-mice  is  the 
gnawing  of  bark  from  the  fruit-trees,  so  that  in  some  of  the 
Western  States  this  is  the  most  serious  difficulty  the  01- 
chardist  has  to  contend  with.  Whole  rows  of  young  trees 
in  nurseries  are  stripped  of  their  bark,  and  of  course  die ; 
and  where  apple-seeds  are  planted,  the  mice  are  sure  to  dig 
half  of  them  up  to  eat  the  kernels.  This  mischief  is  mainly 
done  in  the  winter,  when  the  trees  are  packed  away  from 
the  frost ;  or  if  they  are  growing,  because  then  the  mice 
can  move  about  concealed  under  the  snow,  and  nibble  all 
the  bark  away  up  to  the  surface.  Rabbits  get  much  of  the 
credit  of  this  naughty  work,  for  they  do  a  good  deal  of  it 
on  their  own  account.  The  gardener  has  the  same  trouble, 
often  finding,  when  lie  uncovers  a  rare  and  costly  plant  in 


84:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

the  spring,  that  the  mice  have  enjoyed  good  winter-quarters 
in  his  straw  covering,  and  have  been  gnawing  to  death  his 
choice  roses.  Millions  of  dollars,  perhaps,  would  not  pay 
for  all  the  damage  these  small  creatures  thus  accomplish 
each  year  in  the  United  States,  and  I  fear  they  will  become 
more  and  more  of  a  plague  if  we  continue  to  kill  off  the 
harmless  hawks,  owls,  butcher-birds,  and  snakes,  which  are 
the  policemen  appointed  by  Nature  to  look  after  the  mice, 
and  protect  us  against  them. 

In  captivity  the  wild  mice,  especially  the  white-footed 
HesperomyS)  make  very  pretty  pets;  and  one  can  easily 
study  all  their  ways  by  giving  them  earth  in  which  to  bur- 
row, and  the  various  sorts  of  food  in  which  they  delight. 


IV. 

AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL    LECTURE. 

I  HAD  almost  written  my  title,  unconsciously,  Beautiful 
Birds,  for  they  have  become  symbols  to  us  of  all  that  is 
blithesome  and  free.  No  one  of  all  the  classes  of  animals 
is  more  worthy  of  attention,  or  more  easily  studied.  In- 
cluding within  their  number  every  variety  of  costume  and 
shape;  present  everywhere,  and  at  all  times;  making  us 
their  confidants  by  coming  to  our  door-steps,  or  awaiting 
us  with  newer  and  newer  surprises  if  we  go  to  the  remote 
woods,  the  pathless  ocean,  or  snowy  mountain  ;  marshalling 
their  ranks  over  our  heads,  coming  and  going  with  the  sea- 
sons, and  defying  our  pursuit ;  surely,  here  is  something  for 
the  poet  and  artist,  as  well  as  the  naturalist,  to  think  upon. 

But  a  bird  is  something  more  than  a  flitting  fairy,  or  an 
incarnation  of  song.  It  has  substance  and  form ;  it  moves 
swiftly,  mysteriously  from  place  to  place,  and  looks  out 
carefully  for  its  own  protection  and  subsistence ;  it  cun- 
ningly builds  a  home,  where  it  raises  its  young  and  teaches 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


HATTNT   OF   THE   HEUON. 


them  to  care  for  themselves.  The  how  and  why  of  some 
of  these  incidents  of  bird-life  I  want  to  tell  you — I  say 
some,  for  after  all  many  of  the  ways  of  our  familiar  birds 
are  unexplained. 

The  most  prominent  fact  about  a  bird  is  a  faculty  in 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE. 


87 


which  it  differs  from  every  other  creature  except  the  bat 
and  insects — its  power  of  flying.  For  this  purpose,  the 
bird's  arm  ends  in  only  one  long  slender  finger,  instead  of 
a  full  hand.  To  this  are  attached  the  quills  and  small 
feathers  (coverts)  on  the  upper  side,  which  make  up  the 
wing.  Observe  how  light  all  this  is :  in  the  first  place,  the 
bones  are  hollow;  then  the  shafts  of  the  feathers  are  hol- 
low; and,  finally,  the  feathers  themselves  are  made  of  the 
most  delicate  filaments,  interlocking  and  clfnging  to  one 
another  with  little  grasping  hooks  of  microscopic  fineness. 


THE   KINGFI8UEE. 


88  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Well,  how  does  a  bird  fly  ?  It  seems  simple  enough  to  de- 
scribe, and  yet  it  is  a  problem  that  the  wisest  in  such  mat- 
ters have  not  yet  worked  out  to  everybody's  satisfaction* 
This  explanation,  by  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  appears  to  me  to 
be  the  best:  An  open  wing  forms  a  hollow  on  its  under- 
side like  an  inverted  saucer;  when  the  wing  is  forced 
down,  the  upward  pressure  of  the  air  caught  under  this 
concavity  lifts  the  bird  up,  much  as  you  hoist  yourself  up 
between  the  parallel  bars  in  a  gymnasium.  But  he  could 
never  in  this  waj^  get  ahead,  and  the  hardest  question  is 
still  to  be  answered.  Now,  the  front  edge  of  the  wing, 
formed  of  the  bones  and  muscles  of  the  forearm,  is  rigid 
and  unyielding,  while  the  hinder  margin  is  merely  the  soft 
flexible  ends  of  the  feathers ;  so,  when  the  wing  is  forced 
down,  the  air  under  it,  finding  this  margin  yielding  the 
easier,  would  rush  out  here,  and,  in  so  doing,  would  bend 
up  the  ends  of  the  quills,  pushing  them  forward  out  of  the 
way,  which,  of  course,  would  tend  to  shove  the  bird  ahead. 
This  process,  quickly  repeated,  results  in  the  phenomenon 
of  flight. 

The  vigor  and  endurance  that  birds  upon  the  wing  dis- 
play is  astonishing.  Nearly  all  the  migratory  species  of 
Europe  must  cross  the  Mediterranean  without  resting. 
Many  take  the  direct  course  between  the  coast  of  Africa 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE. 


89 


and  England,  which  is  still  farther.  Our  little  bluebird 
pays  an  annual  visit  to  the  Bermudas,  six  hundred  miles 
from  the  continent,  and  Wilson  estimated  its  apparently 


SUMMER  YELLOW-BIED8. 


very  moderate  flight  at  much  more  than  a  mile  a  minute. 
Remarkable  stories  are  told  of  the  long  flights  tame  falcons 
have  been  known  to  take — one  going  a  thousand  three  hun- 
dred miles  in  a  day.  Yarrell  mentions  carrier-pigeons  that 


90  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

flew  from  Rouen  to  Ghent,  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  in 
an  hour  and  a  half;  but  this  speed  is  surpassed  by  our  own 
wild  pigeons,  which  have  been  shot  in  New  York  before 
the  rice  they  had  picked  in  Georgia  had  been  digested.  It 
is  ascertained  that  a  certain  warbler  must  wing  its  way 
from  Egypt  to  Heligoland,  one  thousand  two  hundred 
miles,  in  one  night,  and  it  is  probable  that  martins  endure 
equal  exertion  every  long  summer's  day,  in  their  ceaseless 
pursuit  of  insects.  Taking,  then,  one  hundred  miles  per 
hour  as  the  rate  of  flight  during  migrations,  we  need  not 
be  surprised  that  representatives  of  more  than  thirty  spe- 
cies of  our  wood-birds  have  been  shot  in  the  British  Isles, 
since  they  could  well  sustain  the  sixteen  hundred  miles  be- 
tween Newfoundland  and  Ireland. 

"A  good  ornithologist,"  says  White  of  Selborne,  "should 
be  able  to  distinguish  birds  by  their  air,  as  well  as  their 
colors  and  shape,  on  the  ground  as  well  as  on  the  wTing, 
and  in  the  bush  as  well  as  in  the  hand."  Almost  every 
family  of  birds  has  its  peculiarities  of  manner.  Thus,  the 
kites  and  buzzards  glide  round  in  circles  with  wings  ex- 
panded and  motionless;  marsh-hawks  or  harriers  fly  low 
over  meadows  and  stubble-fields,  beating  the  ground  regu- 
larly. Crows  and  jays  lumber  along  as  though  it  were 
hard  work;  and  herons  are  still  more  clumsy, having  their 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE.  91 

long  necks  and  longer  legs  to  encumber  them.  The  wood- 
pecker's progress  is  in  a  series  of  long  undulations,  opening 
and  closing  the  wings  at  every  stroke.  Our  thistle-loving 
goldfinch  also  flies  this  way,  but  the  most  of  the  Fringil- 
lidce  (finches,  sparrows,  etc.)  have  a  short,  jerking  flight, 
accompanied  with  many  bobbings  and  flirtings.  Warblers 
and  fly-catchers  fly  high  up,  smoothly  and  swiftly.  Swal- 
lows and  night-  hawks  seem  to  be  mowing  the  air  with 
cimitar  wings,  and  move  with  surprising  energy.  On  the 
ground,  most  small  birds  are  hoppers,  like  the  sparrows, 
but  a  few,  like  the  robin  and  water-thrush,  truly  and  grace- 
fully walk,  and  the  "shore-birds"  are  emphatically  runners. 
Among  all  sorts,  queer  movements  are  assumed  in  the  love 
season,  not  noticeable  at  other  times. 

There  is  no  part  of  the  world  where  the  feathered  tribe 
is  not  represented ;  but  no  two  quarters  of  the  globe,  and 
scarcely  any  two  places  a  hundred  miles  apart,  have  pre- 
cisely the  same  sort  of  birds,  or  in  similar  abundance. 
There  are  several  reasons  for  this :  first,  the  influence  of 
climate.  Birds  provided  with  the  means  of  resisting  the 
extreme  cold  of  northern  regions  would  be  very  uncom- 
fortable under  a  southern  sun.  The  geographical  distribu- 
tion of  plants  has  long  been  recognized,  but  it  is  only  re- 
cently that  a  like  distribution  of  birds  has  been  proved 


92 


FRIENDS   WORTH  KNOWING. 


to  exist.  Moreover, 
oceans  and  high 
mountain  chains  lim- 
it the  range  of  many 
kinds.  Europe  and 
America  have  scarce- 
ly any  species  in 
common,  save  of  wa- 
ter-birds and  large 
hawks.  Those  from 
the  Pacific  coast  are 
essentially  different 
from  those  found  in 
the  Mississippi  Val- 
ley. Each  district 
has  a  set  of  birds — 
and  other  animals  as 
well — peculiar  to  its 
peculiar  geography. 
Another  great  cir- 
cumstance, deter- 
mining the  pres- 
ence or  absence  of 
certain  birds  in  the  breeding  season,  is  the  abundance  or 


YELLOW-BREASTED  CHATS. 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE.  9^> 

scarcity  of  suitable  food,  not  only  for  themselves,  but  also 
for  their  young;  as  the  food  of  birds  at  that  time  is  often 
very  different  from  their  ordinary  diet,  it  requires  a  close 
acquaintance  with  them  to  prophesy  confidently  what  birds 
would  be  likely  to  be  found  breeding  at  a  given  point. 

But  few  birds  remain  in  the  same  region  all  the  year 
round.  Out  of  about  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  spe- 
cies occurring  in  New  England  or  New  York  in  June,  only 
twenty-five  or  so  stay  throughout  the  year ;  of  these  forty 
or  fifty  come  to  us  in  winter  only,  leaving  us  two  hundred 
and  twenty-five  species  of  spring  birds,  half  of  which  num- 
ber merely  pass  through  to  their  northern  breeding  places. 
With  this  disparity,  no  wonder  that  we  look  for  the  return 
of  the  birds,  arid  hail  with  delight  the  bluebird  calling  to  us 
through  clear  March  mornings,  the  velvet-coated  robins,  the 
battalions  of  soldierly  cedar-birds,  the  ghostly  turtle-doves 
sighing  their  surging  refrain,  the  pewees,  and  thrushes,  and 
golden  orioles,  till  at  last,  amid  the  bursting  foliage  and 
quickness  of  May  life,  a  full  host  of  brilliant  choristers 
holds  jubilee  in  the  sunny  tree-tops. 

In  a  very  few  days,  as  suddenly  and  mysteriously  as  they 
came,  half  the  gay  company  has  passed  us,  going  farther 
north  to  breed.  Could  we  follow  this  army,  we  should  find 
it  thinning  gradually,  as  one  species  after  another  found  its 


94  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

appropriate  station  —  a  part  in  upper  New  England  and 
Canada,  many  about  Hudson's  Bay ;  while  not  a  few  (water- 
birds  especially)  would  lead  us  to  the  very  shores  of  Arctic 
fjords.  For  them  the  summer  is  so  short  that  ice  and  snow 
start  them  south  before  we  have  any  thought  of  cold  weath- 
er. On  their  way  they  pick  up  all  the  Labrador  and  Can- 
ada birds,  re-enforced  by  their  young,  so  that  an  even  great- 
er army  invades  our  woods  amid  the  splendor  of  October 
than  made  them  ring  in  the  exuberance  of  June.  Then 
our  own  birds  catch  the  infection,  and  singly,  or  in  squads, 
companies,  and  regiments,  join  the  great  march  to  the  sa- 
vannas of  the  Gulf  States,  the  table-lands  of  Central  Amer- 
ica, and  on  even  to  the  jungles  of  the  Orinoco.  What  a 
wonderful  perception  is  that  which  teaches  them  to  migrate; 
tells  them  just  the  daj^  to  set  out,  the  proper  course  to  take, 
and  keeps  them  true  to  it  over  ocean  and  prairie,  and  mo- 
notonous forests,  and  often  in  the  night!  That  the  young, 
learning  the  route  from  the  parent,  remember  it,  would  be 
no  less  remarkable  were  it  true,  which  it  probably  is  not ; 
for  many  species  seem  to  go  north  by  one  route,  as  along 
the  coast,  and  return  by  another  west  of  the  Alleghanies, 
or  vice  versa.  In  proceeding  northward,  the  males  go  ahead 
of  the  females  a  week  or  so  ;  returning  in  the  fall,  the  males 
again  take  the  lead,  and  the  young  bring  up  the  rear.  Yet 


A  JUNE  MORNING. 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE.  97 

there  are  many  exceptions  to  this  rule,  for  with  not  a  few 
birds  the  males  and  females  travel  together;  and  with  some, 
old  and  fully  plurnaged  males  are  the  last  to  arrive.  All 
birds  migrate  more  or  less — even  such,  like  the  crow  and 
song -sparrow,  as  stay  with  us  through  the  year;  for  we 
probably  do  not  see  the  same  individuals  both  winter  and 
summer.  Even  tropical  birds  move  a  little  way  from  the 
equator,  and  back  again  with  the  season ;  and  in  mountain- 
ous regions  most  of  the  birds,  and  many  small  quadrupeds, 


THE  HUMMING- BIRD'S  NEST. 


have  a  vertical  migration  only,  descending  to  the  valleys  in 
winter,  and  reascending  to  the  summits  in  summer — differ- 

7 


98  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ence  of  altitude  accomplishing  the  same  climatic  results  as 
a  change  in  latitude. 

We  can  see  various  causes  of  these  migrations,  some  of 


ONLY  A  OAT-BIED." 


which  have  already  been  suggested,  but  the  chief  cause 
seems  to  be  the  necessity  of  their  accustomed  food.  "We 
find  that  those  birds  which  make  the  longest  and  most  com- 
plete migrations  are  insect  and  honey -eaters;  while  the 
graminivorous  and  omnivorous  birds,  and  such,  like  the  tit- 
mouse and  nut-hatch,  as  subsist  on  the  young  of  insects  to 
be  found  under  the  bark  of  trees,  go  but  a  short  distance  to 
escape  inclement  weather,  or  do  not  migrate  at  all.  Sports- 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE.  99 

men  recognize  the  fact  that  the  snipe  and  woodcock  have 
returned,  not  because  the  rigorous  winter  days  are  wholly 
passed,  but  because  the  frost  is  sufficiently  out  of  the  ground 
to  allow  the  worms  to  come  to  the  surface ;  and  know  that 
in  warm,  springy  meadows  these  birds  may  often  be  found 
all  through  the  year.  Man  no  doubt  influences  the  mi- 
gratory habits  of  birds.  To  many  he  offers  inducements 
in  the  shelter,  and  in  the  abundance  of  insects  which  his 
industry  occasions,  to  linger  later  in  the  fall  than  was  their 
wont,  and  return  earlier  in  the  spring.  While,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  persecution  which  the  shy  wild- fowl  have  received 
has  caused  them  generally  to  repair  to  secluded  breeding- 
places,  far  north  of  their  haunts  of  fifty  years  ago.  But 
the  migrations  of  most  birds  are  somewhat  irregular,  and 
we  have  so  few  reliable  data  that  we  can  hardly  yet  deter- 
mine the  laws  which  govern  their  seasonal  movements, 
much  less  assert  the  ancient  origin  of  the  "  migratory  in- 
stinct," so  called,  or  state  the  varied  influences  that  have 
led  to  the  present  powerful  habit,  and  have  pointed  out 
the  routes  which  the  flocks  now  follow,  spring  and  fall. 
The  geologist  must  aid  the  zoological  student  in  solving 
these  problems. 

The  true  home  of  a  bird,  then,  is  where  it  rears  its  young, 
even  though  it  be  not  there  more  than  a  third  of  the  year, 


100 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


and  everywhere  else  it  is  merely  a  traveller  or  migrant. 
Should  you  then,  after  say  two  years  of  observation,  want 
to  write  down  a  list  of  the  birds  inhabiting  your  district— 
and  you  would  thus  be  doing  a  real  service  to  science — it 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LfiCTURK 


101 


is  important  that  you  mention  whether  each  bird  breeds 
there,  passes  through  spring  and  autumn,  or  is  only  a  win- 
ter visitor. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  animal  in  the  world  that  comes  near- 
er to  man's  heart,  and  seems  more  akin,  than  the  bird,  be- 


TUK   PLOVER. 


cause  of  its  beautiful  home-life,  and  the  loving  care  with 
which  it  anticipates  and  provides  for  its  brood.  There  is 
a  charm  about  the  nest  of  a  bird  that  does  not  linger  about 
the  hive  of  the  wild  bees,  the  burrow  of  the  woodchuck, 
or  the  dome  of  the  musk-rat.  It  is  more  a  home  than  any 


102  'jRflfiKZU  WORTH  KNOWING. 

of  them.  The  situation  varies  as  much  as  the  birds  them- 
selves. Trees,  however,  form  the  most  common  support : 
among  the  tip-top  branches  of  them  warblers  fix  their  tiny 
cradles;  to  the  outer  drooping  twigs  of  them  orioles  and 
vireos  can  swing  their  hammocks;  upon  their  stout  horizon- 
tal limbs  the  thrushes  and  tanagers  may  come  and  build ; 
against  the  trunk,  and  in  the  great  forks,  hawks,  and  crows, 
and  jays  will  pile  their  rude  structures ;  and  in  the  cracks 
and  crannies,  titmice,  nut -hatches,  and  woodpeckers  clean 
out  old  holes,  or  chisel  new,  in  which  to  deposit  their 
eggs.  But  most  of  the  large  birds  of  prey  inhabit  lone 
crags,  making  an  eyrie  which  they  repair  from  year  to  year 
for  the  newr  brood.  The  ground,  too,  bears  the  less  preten- 
tious houses  of  sparrows  and  larks,  and  the  scattered  eggs 
of  sand-pipers,  gulls,  and  terns ;  the  marshes  are  occupied 
by  rails,  herons,  and  ducks ;  the  banks  of  rivers  are  bur- 
rowed into  by  kingfishers  and  sand-martins;  so  that  al- 
most every  conceivable  position  is  adopted  by  some  bird 
or  another,  and  its  peculiar  custom  usually,  though  not  by 
any  means  invariably,  adhered  to  by  that  species.  A  curi- 
ous instance  of  change  in  this  respect  is  shown  by  the  two 
barn-swallows  and  the  chimney-swallow,  which,  before  the 
civilization  of  this  country,  plastered  their  nests  in  caves, 
and  in  the  inside  of  hollow  trees,  as  indeed  they  yet  do  in 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE. 


103 


the  far  north-west.  In  the  materials  used,  and  the  con- 
struction of  the  nest,  birds  adapt  themselves  largely  to  cir- 
cumstances. In  the  Northern  States,  for  example,  the  Bal- 
timore oriole  uses  hempen  fibres,  cotton  twine,  et  ccetera,  for 
its  nest;  but  in  the  heat  of  Louisiana  the  same  pouch-shaped 


THE    VVOOD-PEWEE. 


structure  is  woven  of  Spanish  moss,  and  is  light  and  cool. 
The  intelligence  and  foresight  that  some  birds  exhibit  in 
their  architecture  prove  reason  rather  than  instinct,  as  we 
popularly  use  these  words ;  while  others  are  so  stupid  as  to 
upset  all  our  respect  for  their  faculties  of  calculation.  Both 
sexes  usually  help  in  building  the  nest,  and  work  industri- 


104 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


ously  at  it  till  it  is  ready  for  the  eggs— sometimes  finishing 
it  even  after  the  female  has  begun  to  sit. 

The  best  known  birds  probably  are  such  famous  songsters 


TURKEY-BUZZARDS. 


AN  ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE.  105 

as  the  nightingale  and  the  skylark ;  and  because  these  and 
our  canaries  are  foreign,  most  persons  suppose  that  we  have 
no  equally  fine  songsters  of  our  own.  Let  a  doubter  go 
into  the  June  woods  only  once!  June  is  harvest -month 
for  the  ornithologist.  Then  the  birds  are  dressed  in  their 
best,  are  showing  off  all  their  good  points  to  their  lady- 
loves, are  building  their  nests,  and — being  very  happy — are 
in  full  song.  Morning  and  evening  there  is  such  a  chorus 
as  makes  the  jubilant  air  fairly  quiver  with  melody,  while  all 
day  you  catch  the  yeap  of  pigmies  in  the  tree-tops,  the  chat- 
tering and  twittering  of  garrulous  sparrows  and  swallows, 
and  the  tintinnabulation  of  wood-thrushes.  I  cannot  even 
name  all  these  glorious  singers.  Perhaps  the  many-tongued 
mocking-bird  stands  at  the  head  of  the  list;  possibly  the 
hermit- thrush,  whose  song  is  of  "  serene  religious  beati- 
tude," or  the  blue  grossbeak  or  winter  wren.  As  you 
choose.  The  bird  you  think  pre-eminent  to-day  will  be 
excelled  to-morrow,  and  you  will  refuse  to  distinguish  be- 
tween them  for  the  love  and  admiration  you  bear  them  all. 


V. 

OUR   WINTER   BIRDS. 

NOT  often  in  the  genial  days  of  early  and  late  summer, 
or  even  in  the  torrid  heat  of  its  middle  months,  do  we  re- 
call winter  with  pleasure,  or  wish  ourselves  surrounded  by 
its  scenes;  while,  on  the  contrary,  the  dark  hours  of  the 
long  winter  evenings  are  often  enlivened  with  reminiscences 
of  balmy  weather,  the  fireplace  is  adorned  with  bouquets 
of  dried  flowers,  and  every  indication  of  returning  spring  is 
eagerly  welcomed.  Nothing  is  more  precious  to  the  eye, 
weary  of  the  desolation  which  snow  and  ice  bring  to  the 
landscape,  than  the  winter  birds,  whose  bright  forms  alone 
diversify  the  bare  and  colorless  world,  and  whose  cheery 
notes  alone  break  the  stillness  and  apparent  immobility  of 
Nature.  They  always  carry  a  bit  of  the  June  sunshine 
about  with  them,  and  dropping  it  from  their  wings,  like 
seed,  wherever  they  flit,  seem  thus  to  preserve  the  season 
through  the  ravages  of  winter,  to  which  all  else  succumbs. 
Some  words  about  them  may,  therefore,  help  to  keep  the 


OUR   WINTER  BIRDS.  107 

sense  of  summer  alive  in  our  hearts  through  this  midnight 
of  the  year. 

Most  persons  are  surprised  when  told  of  the  large  num- 
ber of  these  feathered  friends  which  begin  the  new  year 
with  us ;  for  in  January,  in  the  near  neighborhood  of  New 
York  city,  over  fifty  species  appear  with  more  or  less  reg- 
ularity. They  comprise  two  classes :  those  which  reside  in 
our  fields  the  year  round,  like  the  bluejay;  and  such,  like 
the  snow-flake,  as  are  driven  to  our  milder  climate  by  the 
severity  of  a  Northern  winter  that  even  their  arctic-bred, 
hardy  constitutions  are  unable  to  endure.  The  members 
of  the  latter  class  visit  us  in  varying  numbers,  but  are  es- 
pecially numerous  in  snowy  seasons. 

It  is  probably  less  a  fear  of  the  dreadful  temperature, 
even  in  the  frigid  zones,  which  compels  the  birds  to  seek 
our  milder  latitudes,  than  the  inability  to  obtain  food  when 
snow  buries  the  seed-bearing  weeds  and  sends  the  smaller 
animals  to  their  hibernacula,  and  the  increasing  darkness 
of  the  long  arctic  night  shuts  out  from  view  what  the  snow 
has  not  covered.  All  birds — or  almost  all — on  their  south- 
ward migration,  fly  at  night,  resting  during  the  day.  We 
have  the  most  abundant  evidence  of  this;  and  it  has  occur- 
red to  me  that  possibly  it  is  the  deepening  darkness  of  high 
latitudes  which  first  warns  them  off;  that  the  natural  re- 


108  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

curreiice  of  night  seems  to  them  like  being  overtaken  by 
the  darkness  which  they  thought  they  had  left  behind,  but 
which  they  must  again  flee ;  that,  therefore,  they  keep  upon 
the  wing  until  each  morning's  light,  supposing  that  they 
have  thus  again  and  again  outstripped  the  pursuing  gloom, 
until  they  reach  a  region  of  abundant  food,  and  perhaps 
learn  wisdom  from  its  resident  birds.  I  will  confess  that 
I  do  not  myself  put  much  faith  in  this  theory,  but  a  curi- 
ous and  sustaining  fact  is,  that  the  northward  migration, 
in  spring,  is  mostly  accomplished  by  day-journeys  instead 
of  at  night. 

Whatever  the  motive,  no  sooner  has  the  crowd  of  au- 
tumnal migrants,  with  rustling  wings  and  faint  voices,  swept 
through  our  woods — slowly  during  the  long,  mellow  Octo- 
ber da}7s,  when  the  earth  seems  to  stand  still,  and  the  sea- 
sons to  be  in  equipoise ;  swiftly  when  the  first  blast  of  No- 
vember sends  them  skurrying  onward  writh  the  deadened 
leaves— than  their  places  are  taken  by  the  brave  little  fel- 
lows whose  fame  I  celebrate. 

Taking  my  way  to  the  woods  some  bright,  still  morn- 
ing in  January,  when  the  snow  is  crisp  and  the  ice  in  the 
swamps  firm,  I  shall  find  the  sombre  fields  full  of  a  life  of 
their  own  well  worth  my  while  to  see,  even  if  the  exhila- 
ration of  the  walk  does  not  prove  reward  enough.  Here 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS. 


109 


on  this  fence-rail  is  the  track  of  a  squirrel,  and  in  the  cor- 
ner of  the  rail  and  rider  is  the  half-eaten  body  of  a  chicka- 
dee which  some  butcher-bird  has  hung  up.  How  the  dry 
wood  creaks  as  I  climb  over,  and  how  resonant  is  that  dead 
ash  under  the  vigorous  hammer  of  the  little  woodpecker 


SNOW-BUNTING. 


whose  red  crest  glows  like  a  spark  of  fire  against  the  white 
limb !  Around  this  spice-bush  the  mice  have  been  at  work, 
nibbling  the  bark  off  up  to  the  surface  of  the  snow,  and  we 
can  see  the  entrance  to  their  tunnel.  This  path,  trod  bare 
by  the  cows,  leads  to  the  hilly  brush -pasture  where  the 
southern  sun  shines  all  the  afternoon,  and  thither  let  me 
follow. 


110  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Sunny  hill-sides,  the  wooded  banks  of  creeks,  the  hedge- 
rows and  brier-grown  fences  along  the  country  roads,  are 
all  favorite  places  for  the  winter  birds.  Plere  come  the 
sparrows  and  finches,  the  winter  wren  and  rare  cardinal, 
skulking  about  the  thickets,  hopping  through  the  dead 
fern-brakes,  threading  the  mazy  passages  of  the  log-heaps 
and  brush -piles  ready  to  be  burnt  in  the  spring,  coming 
out  upon  the  fence -post  or  way -side  trees  to  sing  their 
morning  roundelay  and  take  their  daily  airing  in  pleasant 
weather.  In  the  open  meadows  are  the  grass-finches,  snow- 
birds, and  the  few  robins  and  medlarks  that  stay  with  us ; 
in  the  edge  of  the  woods  the  bluejay,  flicker,  and  butcher- 
bird ;  in  the  orchards  and  evergreens  the  crossbills,  the 
pine  grossbeaks,  red -polls,  and  cedar-bird;  the  deep  woods 
shelter  the  tiny  nuthatches,  titmice,  and  the  little  wood- 
peckers ;  the  open  sky  affords  space  for  the  birds  of  prey, 
and  the  sea-shore  harbors  for  the  gulls,  sea-ducks,  and  fish- 
hawk.  Such  are  the  chosen  resorts  of  the  different  varie- 
ties, yet,  of  course,  we  shall  occasionally  meet  all  every- 
where, and  sometimes  spots  apparently  most  favorable 
will  be  totally  uninhabited.  In  very  severe  weather  the 
wildest  birds  are  often  compelled  to  come  close  to  the 
house  and  barn  in  search  of  out -door  relief  from  gentle 
hands. 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  Ill 

"  How  'do  the  birds  manage  at  night  and  in  tempestuous 
weather  ?"  is  a  question  often  asked  me. 

The  time  is  not  long  passed  when  it  was  universally  be- 
lieved that  many  of  them  hibernated — especially  the  swal- 
lows— burying  themselves  in  the  mud  like  frogs,  or  curl- 
ing up  in  holes  in  rocks  like  the  bats ;  and  the  common 
phenomenon  of  the  appearance  of  a  few  summer  birds  dur- 
ing "  warm  spells  "in  winter  was  assumed  to  prove  that 
they  had  been  torpid,  but  had  waked  up  under  the  genial 
warmth,  as  bats  often  do.  It  was  not  three  months  ago 
that  I  saw  in  an  English  newspaper  a  letter  from  a  man 
who  claimed  to  have  found  a  hedge-sparrow  (I  think)  tor- 
pid somewhere  in  the  mud.  But  the  search  for  proofs  of 
this  theory  discovered  that  the  birds  supposed  to  hibernate 
migrated,  while  of  the  birds  which  remained  in  this  lati- 
tude through  the  cold  months  we  saw  more  in  warm,  fine 
weather,  for  the  natural  reason  that  then  they  forsook  the 
sheltered  hollows  and  cosy  recesses  of  the  woods  where 
they  had  retreated  during  stormy  days,  and  came  out  into 
the  sunlight.  Dense  cedars  and  the  close  branches  of  small 
spruces  and  other  evergreens  afford  them  good  shelter,  and 
thickets  of  brambles  are  made  use  of  when  these  are  not 
to  be  found ;  hollow  trees  are  natural  houses  in  which  large 
numbers  huddle,  and  the  cave -like  holes  under  the  roots 


112  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

of  trees  growing  on  steep  banks  become  favorite  hospices. 
The  grouse  plunges  through  the  snow  down  to  the  ground, 
where  it  scrapes  a  "  form,"  or  crawls  under  the  hemlock 
and  spruce  boughs  that  droop  to  the  earth  with  the  weight 
of  snow,  and  allows  the  white  mantle  to  drift  over  it,  sub- 
sisting the  while  on  the  spruce-buds;  when  the  storm  ceases 
it  can  easily  dig  its  way  out,  but  sometimes  a  rain  and 
hard  frost  follow,  which  make  such  a  crust  on  the  snow 
that  it  cannot  break  up  through,  arid  so  it  starves  to 
death.  The  more  domestic  sparrows,  robins,  and  flickers 
burrow  into  the  hay-mow,  find  a  warm  roost  in  the  barn 
near  the  cattle,  or,  attracted  by  the  warmth  of  the  furnace, 
creep  under  the  eaves  or  into  a  chink  next  the  chimney  of 
the  greenhouse  or  country  dwelling.  The  meadow -lark 
and  quail  seek  out  sunny  nooks  in  the  fields  and  crouch 
down  out  of  the  blast;  while  the  woodcock  hides  among 
the  moss  and  ferns  of  damp  woods  where  only  the  very 
severest  cold  can  chain  the  springs.  Along  the  coast  many 
birds  go  from  the  interior  to  the  sea-shore  in  search  of  a 
milder  climate. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all  these  resources  in  the  way  of 
shelter ;  in  spite  of  their  high  degree  of  warmth  and  vital- 
ity, probably  not  exceeded  by  any  other  animal;  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  they  can  draw  themselves  up  into  a  per- 


OUR   WINTER  BIRDS.  113 

feet  ball  of  feathers  which  are  the  best  of  clothing,  and 
that  they  can  shelter  themselves  from  the  driving  storm, 
it  appears  that  birds  often  perish  from  cold  in  large  num- 
bers. Ordinarily,  birds  seem  able  to  foretell  a  change  of 
weather,  and  prepare.  The  reports  of  the  United  States 
weather  bureau  certainly  show,  that,  during  the  fall  and 
winter,  the  ducks,  geese,  cranes,  crows,  and  other  notable 
species — and  apparently  generally — abandon  their  former 
haunts  upon  the  approach  of  a  cold  wave  or  hard  win- 
ter storm  for  more  southern  localities,  often  passing  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  severity  of  such  storms,  though  taking 
their  departure  only  a  few  hours  before  these  unfavorable 
changes.  Resident  species,  not  caring,  or  not  able,  to  run 
away  to  warmer  latitudes,  ought  to  know  enough  to  hide 
away  from  the  fury  of  the  gale;  and  they  do.  But  some- 
times there  come  sudden,  unpresaged  changes  —  cold,  icy 
gales,  which  charge  down  upon  us  after  thawing-days,  con- 
verting the  air,  which  was  almost  persuading  the  grass  to 
revive,  into  an  atmosphere  that  cuts  the  skin  like  the  im- 
pinging of  innumerable  particles  of  frost,  and  shrivels  ev- 
ery object  with  cold,  or  buries  it  under  dry  and  drifting 
snow.  Then  it  is  that  the  small  birds,  caught  unprepared, 
suffer.  At  first,  such  as  are  overcome  seem  unusually  ac- 
tive, running  about  apparently  in  search  of  food,  but  tak- 

8 


114  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ing  little  notice  of  one's  approach.  "  Should  one  attempt 
to  fly,"  writes  a  recent  observer,  "it  immediately  falls  on  its 
back  as  if  shot.  The  legs  and  toes  are  stretched  out  to  their 


BROWN    CREEl'EIi. 


farthest  extent,  and  are  quite  rigid  ;  the  eyes  protrude,  are 
insensible  to  the  touch,  and  the  whole  body  quivers  slight- 
ly. It  remains  in  this  state  from  one  to  two  minutes,  when 
it  recovers  suddenly,  and  seems  as  active  as  before.  If 
taken  in  the  hand,  it  will  immediately  go  into  convulsions, 
even  if  it  has  been  in  a  warm  room  for  several  hours,  and 
has  been  supplied  plentifully  with  food.  Death  usually 
puts  an  end  to  its  suffering  in  a  day  or  two." 

Such  catastrophes  are  more  likely  to  occur,  Tiowever,  in 
the  spring,  after  the  birds  have  begun  to  come  northward, 
than  in  the  steadier  weather  of  January ;  and  even  the  song- 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  115 

sparrows  and  snow-birds,  which  have  successfully  withstood 
the  rigors  of  the  lowest  midwinter  temperature,  as  often 
succumb  as  the  less  inured  songsters  from  the  South. 

The  favorite  among  our  winter  birds,  perhaps  because 
the  most  domestic,  taking  the  place  of  England's  robin-red- 
breast, is  the  slate-colored  snow-bird,  which  is  one  of  the 
sparro\vs.  It  comes  to  us  with  the  first  frosts,  and  stays 
until  the  wake -robin  and  spring -beauty  bloom.  Even 
then  some  of  them  do  not  go  far  away  to  spend  the  sum- 
mer, for  they  breed  in  the  heights  behind  the  Delaware 
Water -Gap,  and  also  in  the  Catskills.  The  main  body, 
nevertheless,  go  to  Canada  and  Labrador.  In  the  Rocky 
Mountains  I  have  seen  them  many  times  in  midsummer 
as  far  south  as  the  latitude  of  Cincinnati;  but  there  the 
Canada  jay  also  breeds,  although  in  the  East  its  nest  is  nev- 
er found — great  altitude  in  the  Sierras  affording  the  same 
climate  which  eastward  is  only  to  be  at  tained  at  high  lat- 
itudes. 

The  nest  of  the  snow-bird  is  placed  on  the  ground  among 
the  moss,  or  under  the  protection  of  the  root  of  a  tree,  and 
is  built  of  grass,  weed  stalks,  and  various  fibres.  The  eggs 
are  whitish,  sprinkled  with  pale  chocolate  and  dark  red- 
dish-brown. Several  species  besides  our  Junco  hyemalis 
are  found  in  mountainous  parts  of  the  far  West  and  North- 


116 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


west,  but  they  inter- 
grade  conf  using]  y, 
and  their  nidification 
is  essentially  the  same. 
A  snow-bird  is  a  snow- 
bird from  one  end  of 
the  country  to  the  oth- 
er, and  the  sharp,  me- 
tallic note  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  whole 
genus. 

Truer  spirits  of  the 
driving  snow — for  the 
junco  is  a  sort  of  fair- 
weather  bird  after  all 
— are  the  snow-bunt- 
ings, or  snow-flakes, 
or  white  snow-birds, 
or,  absurdest  of  all, 
winter  -  geese,  as  the 
Nahant  fishermen  call 
them.  Their  system- 
atic name  is  Plectro- 
phanes  nivalis,  and  their  plumage  is  handsomely  marked 


CARDLN  AL-G  KOSSBE  AK. 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  117 

with  white  and  chocolate -brown.  Sometimes  a  flock  of 
these  buntings  will  whirl  into  our  door-yard  for  a  brief  mo- 
ment; but  in  general  you  must  go  to  the  upland  fields  and 
frozen  marshes  to  find  them,  and  the  best  time  is  just  after 
a  "cold  snap"  or  a  heavy  snow.  The  Hackensack  mead- 
ows at  such  times  are  full  of  them,  and  I  have  seen  flocks 
of  hundreds  pirouetting  over  the  ice -covered,  wind-swept 


A  YELLOW-BIED   IN   WINTER  DKESS. 


shores  of  Lake  Erie,  or  whirling  down  the  bleak  sands  of 
Cape  Cod.  What  attracted  them%  to  such  exposed  and 
dreary  spots  I  could  never  divine.  When  they  first  come 
they  seem"  unsuspicious  of  any  special  danger  from  man, 
yet  are  continually  skurrying  away  from  some  imaginary 
cause  of  alarm.  Never  going  far  south  of  New  York,  we 
see  few  of  them  even  here  in  mild  seasons,  and,  as  the  close 


118  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

of  the  winter  approaches,  they  are  among  the  first  to  hasten 
to  their  home  within  the  arctic  circle.  In  every  alternate 
flock  of  snow-flakes  may  perhaps  be  found  one  or  two  Lap- 
land longspurs — another  bird  which  builds  its  nest  in  the 
moss  at  the  foot  of  Greenland  glaciers.  Its  coat  is  white 
and  black  and  chestnut,  so  that  it  is  easily  distinguishable 
from  its  lighter  fellow,  but  it  is  very  uncommon. 

Next  to  the  diminutive  humming-bird,  the  smallest  bird 
on  this  continent  is  the  golden -crested  kinglet,  on  whose 
tiny  brow  rests  a  coronet  of  gold,  fiery  red  and  black, 
below  which  the  jewelled  eye  is  set  in  a  soft,  dusky  back- 
ground of  olive-green.  From  tooth  to  tail  he  is  not  so  long 
as  your  finger,  yet  this  pygmy  braves  the  fury  and  desola- 
tion of  winter  as  cheerily  as  though  soft  skies  arched  over- 
head. I  owe  him  many  thanks  for  piping, his  nonchalant, 
contented  little  lecture  into  my  ears  when  I  have  growled 
at  the  weather  and  the  "foolishness"  which  dragged  me 
out-of-doors  on  certain  terrible  days,  only  to  see  what  such 
absurd  fellows  as  he  were  about.  He  is  the  most  indepen- 
dent, irrepressible  little  chap  I  know  of,  and  for  the  life  of 
me  I  never  can  be  down-hearted  when  he  is  by.  In  sum- 
mer the  gold-crest  (like  his  royal  brother,  the  ruby-crown)  • 
is  a  fly-catcher,  expertly  seizing  insects  on  the  wing ;  and 
on  warm  days  in  winter  he  forages  in  the  tree-tops  for  such 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  119 

moths  and  beetles  as  are  abroad;  but  necessarily  he  must 
subsist  chiefly  on  the  larvae  which  hibernate  under  the  rot- 
ten bark,  and  upon  insects'  eggs.  Thus  he  is  helped  to 
many  a  meal  by  the  sapsuckers  and  tomtits,  whose  strong- 
er bills  tear  open  the  recesses  where  the  larvae  lie.  In 
summer  the  kinglets  retreat  to  boreal  regions  to  rear  their 
young;  but  we  know  very  little  about  their  domestic  life. 
Just  before  they  leave  us  in  the  spring  I  may,  perhaps, 
have  the  rare  treat  to  hear  a  long  way  off  the  resonant  song 
of  this  minute  minstrel — bold  and  clear,  carrying  me  away 
aloft  like  that  of  the  English  skylark. 
Another  personification  of 

"  Contented  wi'  little,  and  canty  wi'  mair," 

is  the  brown  creeper,  whose  bill  is  curved,  and  long,  and 
tender,  so  that  he  can  do  very  little  digging  for  himself,' 
but  follows  in  the  track  of  the  woodpeckers  and  nut- 
hatches, and  picks  up  the  grubs  which  their  vigorous  beaks 
have  dislodged,  or  searches  carefully  for  such  small  insects, 
and  their  eggs,  as  are  not  well  concealed.  There  is  one 
now  in  the  tree  next  my  window,  in  the  edge  of  the  city, 
as  I  write.  He  flew  from  the  neighboring  horse-chestnut 
to  the  foot  of  the  ailantus,  and  began  a  spiral  inarch  up- 
ward. I  see  him  creep  steadily  round  and  round  and 


120  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

round  the  trunk,  with  his  tail  pressed  in  against  the  tree 
to  sustain  him  (like  the  pointed  stick  trailing  behind  a 
Pennsylvania  wagon),  peering  into  every  crevice,  poking 
his  bill  into  all  the  knot-holes  and  scars  where  limbs  have 
been  shivered  off,  running  out  on  each  branch,  here  picking 
up  half  a  dozen  eggs  that  only  a  bird's  sharp  eye  could 
find,  there  transfixing  with  his  pointed  tongue  some  dor- 
mant beetle  laid  away  on  his  bark  shelf,  or  tearing  open  the 
pupa-case  of  some  unlucky  young  moth,  snugly  dreaming 
of  a  successful  debut  in  May.  This  creeper  is  always  to 
be  found  in  our  winter  woods  and  orchards,  yet  is  nowhere 
abundant ;  its  life  is  a  solitary  one,  and,  although  not  shy, 
it  is  so  restlessly  active  as  easily  to  elude  the  eye.  If,  in 
the  early  spring,  you  have  the  rare  fortune  to  hear  its  song, 
regard  the  privilege  as  precious. 

Another  creeping  bird,  almost  always  moving  head  down- 
ward, more  often  seen  in  midwinter,  because  then  he  ap- 
proaches civilized  life,  while  in  summer  he  retires  to  the 
remote  woods  to  rear  his  brood,  is  the  familiar  nuthatch, 
whose  peculiar  nee-nee-nee — the  most  indifferent,  don't- 
care-a-bit  utterance  in  the  world — is  heard  from  every  other 
tree-trunk.  Like  the  brown  creeper,  the  nuthatches  seek 
their  food  on  the  boles  of  trees,  examining  every  part  by  a 
spiral  survey — a  sort  of  triangulation — and  are  not  content 


OUR   WINTER  BIRDS.  121 

till  the  top  is  reached,  when  they  dive  straight  to  the  roots 
of  the  next  tree,  and  begin  a  new  exploration.  There  is 
no  time  wasted  by  these  little  engineers  in  foolish  flying 
about  or  profitless  research.  Kot  allowing  a  cranny  to  go 
untouched,  they  drag  out  every  unhappy  grub  it  shelters 
before  raiding  the  next  hiding-place  of  insect-life.  Their 
feet  are  broad  and  strong  for  clinging;  their  bills  are  small 
pickaxes,  their  tongues  harpoons,  and  their  brains  marine 
clocks,  jnst  as  steady  one  side  up  as  another.  Thus  they 
are  able  to  live  on  the  injurious  borers  and  the  like  which 
pass  through  their  metamorphoses  beneath  the  bark;  and, 
except  when  everything  is  incased  in  ice,  do  not  eat  seed, 
or  even  alight  on  the  ground.  They  are  among  the  most 
active  and  serviceable  of  the  fruit-grower's  benefactors, 
continuing,  during  the  cold  months,  the  good  work  drop- 
ped in  October  by  the  summer  birds,  and  finding  in  his  in- 
sidious enemies  their  favorite  food.  The  nuthatch  is  the 
leader  of  that  admirable  little  company  composed  of  the 
chickadee,  the  crested  titmouse,  the  downy  woodpecker, 
and  sometimes  of  the  red -bellied  nuthatch  and  spirituel 
creeper,  which  Wilson  truthfully  describes  as  "proceeding 
regularly  from  tree  to  tree  through  the  woods  like  a  corps 
of  pioneers ;  while,  in  a  calm  day,  the  rattling  of  their  bills, 
and  the  rapid  motions  of  their  bodies,  thrown  like  so  many 


122  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

tumblers  and  rope-dancers  into  numberless  positions,  to- 
gether with  the  peculiar  chatter  of  each,  are  altogether  very 
amusing,  conveying  the  idea  of  hungry  diligence,  bustle, 
and  activity." 

Every  one  knows  the  black-capped  titmouse — our  jolly 
little  chickadee,  and  his  jolly  little  chant : 

"  Chick-chickadeedee  !     Saucy  note, 
Out  of  sound  heart  and  merry  throat, 
As  if  it  said  :  '  Good-day,  good  sir ! 
Fine  afternoon,  old  passenger ! 
Happy  to  meet  you  in  these  places, 
Where  January  brings  few  faces.'  " 

He  is  the  hero  of  the  woods;  there  are  courage  and  good- 
nature enough  in  that  compact  little  body,  which  you  may 
hide  in  your  fist,  to  supply  a  whole  groveful  of  May  song- 
sters. He  has  the  Spartan  virtue  of  an  eagle,  the  cheerful- 
ness of  the  thrushes,  the  nimbleness  of  the  sparrow,  the 
endurance  of  the  sea-birds,  condensed  into  his  tiny  frame, 
and  there  have  been  added  a  "peartness"  and  ingenuity  all 
his  own.  His  curiosity  is  immense,  and  his  audacity  equal 
to  it ;  I  have  even  had  one  alight  upon  the  barrel  of  the 
gun  over  my  shoulder  as  I  sat  quietly  under  his  tree.  The 
chickadees  come  to  us  with  the  first  frost;  and  keen  eyes 
may  discover  them  all  the  year  round  in  the  Catskills,  or 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS. 

among  the  heights  of  the  upper  Delaware  River,  whither 
they  go  to  nest,  the  majority,  nevertheless,  passing  to  Can- 
ada for  that  purpose. 

There  is  a  winter  wren  also,  but,  although  considerably 
smaller,  it  is  frequently  mistaken  for  the  inquisitive  and 
saucy  house-wren,  which  fled  south  in  October.  It  is  a 
species  heard  rather  than  seen,  evading  observation  in  the 
dense  brush,  through  which  it  moves  more  like  a  mouse 
than  a  bird.  Its  prolonged  and  startling  bugle-song  is  a 
wonder,  and  its  whole  history  is  charming,  but  I  must  pass 
it  by.  If  you  wish  to  become  acquainted  with  him  (and 
several  of  his  midwinter  associates)  in  more  genial  days, 
you  have  only  to  go  to  the  depths  of  the  Catskills  or  Adi- 
rondacks,  where  he  spends  his  summer. 

The  family  of  sparrows,  finches,  and  buntings — the  Frin- 
gillidce — supplies  more  of  the  winter  woodland  birds  than 
any  other  single  group,  the  list  of  those  regularly  present 
in  January  including  the  pine-grossbeak,  the  red  and  the 
white-winged  crossbills,  the  two  red-poll  linnets,  the  pine, 
grass,  and  gold  finches,  the  song,  tree,  and  English  sparrows, 
besides  an  occasional  straggler  like  the  purple  finch?<cardi- 
nal,  and  white-throat.  The  first  five  mentioned  are  polar 
bred,  and  return  to  their  native  heaths  at  the  earliest  in- 
timation of  spring.  The  pine-grossbeak  is  a  big,  clumsy- 


124: 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


looking  bird,  with  a  plumage  reminding  you  of  a  blossom- 
ing clover-field — a  mixture  of  red  and  dull  green.  It  has 
found  out  what  its  thick,  strong  bill  was  made  for,  and 
crushes  the  scales  of  the  tough  pine-cones  as  though  they 
were  paper.  The  pine-grossbeaks  often  come  into  the  vil- 


CUOSSIilLL. 


lage  streets,  hopping  about  in  search  of  almost  anything  to 
eat,  and  are  very  tame  and  interesting.  Their  note  is  a 
cheery,  one,  and  when  captured  they  thrive  well  in  the 
cage,  eat  apple-seeds  greedily,  and  become  very  entertain- 
ing. The  pine-finch,  or  siskin,  is  its  miniature,  and  seeks 
much  the  same  sort  of  food,  but  must  get  it  from  softer 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  125 

cones,  for  its  bill  does  not  seem  half  as  stout.  It  is  erratic 
in  its  visits,  and  its  actions  outside  of  the  pine-trees  are 
precisely  like  those  of  its  cousin,  the  yellow-bird. 

All  winter  you  may  notice  along  the  field-fences  and  in 
the  grassy  plats  beside  the  railway,  where  weeds  have  gone 
to  seed,  active  flocks  of  small,  plainly -attired  little  birds, 
as  cheerful  as  can  be.  These  are  our  thistle-loving  gold- 
finches, or  yellow-birds,  whose  simple,  sweet  song  and  bil- 
lowy flight  were  part  of  the  delight  of  last  summer,  but 
which  now  have  exchanged  their  gay  livery  of  canary-yel- 
low and  black  for  sober  undress  suits  of  Quaker  drab.  The 
goldfinches,  as  such,  appear  with  the  apple -blossoms,  and 
are  seen  no  later  than  the  gathering  of  the  fruit;  but 
their  seeming  disappearance  in  autumn,  and  reappearance 
in  spring,  are  only  changes  of  plumage.  Nevertheless,  they 
are  not  so  abundant  in  winter  as  in  summer,  many  moving 
a  little  distance  southward.  The  crossbills  are  naturally 
so  named,  for  the  tips  of  their  mandibles  slide  by  one  an- 
other instead  of  shutting  squarely  together.  Whether  or 
not  this  peculiarity  has  been  gradually  acquired  to  meet 
the  necessity  of  a  peculiar  instrument  to  twist  open  the 
cones  and  other  tough  pericarps,  upon  the  contents  of 
which  they  feed ;  or  wrhether  it  is  an  accident  perpetuated 
and  made  the  best  of ;  or  whether  the  crossed  bill  was  "  ere- 


126  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ated"  in  that  fashion  in  the  beginning,  with  a  definite  inten- 
tion toward  pine-cones,  we  may  theorize  upon  to  suit  our 
tastes:  but  certain  it  is  that  it  answers  the  bird's  purpose 
most  admirably.  The  red  crossbill  is  the  more  common 
of  the  two,  but  the  white-winged  is  not  greatly  different. 
They  fly  in  small  flocks,  often  corning  among  the  gardens, 
where  their  odd  appearance  never  fails  to  attract  attention. 
In  addition  to  pine-seeds,  they  feed  on  the  seeds  and  buds 
of  the  cedar,  birch,  alder,  mountain -ash,  Virginia  creeper, 
etc.,  and  probably  add  apples,  haws,  and  berries  to  their 
bill  of  fare,  as  does  the  grossbeak.  They  are  wonderfully 
happy  creatures,  fluttering  in  and  out  of  the  evergreens,  or 
passing  swiftly  from  one  to  another,  working  away  at  a 
swinging  cone  "teeth  and  toe-nail,"  heads  or  tails  up — it 
doesn't  matter — till  every  kernel  is  extracted,  then  with 
one  quick  impulse  launching  into  the  air  and  departing—- 
perhaps for  the  arctic  circle — before  you  have  had  time  to 
bid  them  good-bye. 

One  of  the  earliest  and  handsomest  migrants  from  the 
frozen  North  is  the  little  red-poll  linnet,  which  is  about  the 
size  of  a  stout  canary.  He  is  a  dandy,  changing  his  gay 
suit  of  black,  brown,  white,  saffron,  pink,  red,  and  crimson 
several  times  a  year,  and — at  least  until  he  is  three  or  four 
years  old — never  dressing  twice  alike.  He  is  an  exceed- 


OUR   WINTER  BIRDS.  127 

ingly  melodious  if  not  a  very  versatile  singer,  in  England  is 
often  kept  in  cages  and  mated  with  the  canary,  and  might 
be  here.  There  would  be  no  difficulty  in  catching  him. 

Two  other  of  the  familiar  friends  who  make  our  spring 
meadows  vocal  with  an  incessant  concert,  the  song-sparrow 
and  grass- finch,  remain  with  us  through  the  winter  also; 
but  more  than  half  the  song-sparrows  are  frightened  south- 
ward by  the  first  snow-storm.  A  few,  however,  are  always 
to  be  met  with  in  the  swamps  and  edges  of  the  woods  dur- 
ing January,  living  under  cover  of  the  briers  and  brush- 
heaps,  and  upon  the  seeds  of  various  grasses  and  herbs, 
scratching  up  the  leaves  to  get  at  dormant  insects  or  their 
eggs,  here  picking  up  a  checker-berry  which  the  snow  has 
not  drifted  over,  there  nibbling  at  the  dried  remains  of 
blackberries,  raspberries,  and  wrinkled  crab-apples,  squeez- 
ing the  gum  from  a  swelling  bud,  tearing  open  the  seed- 
case  of  the  wild-rose  whose  blossom  they  shook  to  pieces 
as  they  darted  to  their  nests  in  early  June.  The  brown 
grass-finch — easily  recognized  by  the  two  white  feathers 
shown  in  the  tail  when  flying — seems  scarcely  ever  to  leave 
the  field  in  which  it  was  born.  It  is  emphatically  a  bird  of 
the  meadows,  where  its  song  is  heard  loudest  in  the  long 
summer  twilights  when  most  other  birds  are  silent,  so  that 
Wilson  Flagg  called  it  the  vesper  sparrow.  Building  its 


128  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

nest  in  a  little  hollow  on  the  ground,  finding  its  food 
among  the  grass,  it  seems  hardly  to  fly  over  the  boundary- 
fence  from  one  year's  end  to  another.  How  these  finches 
are  able  to  stand  the  winter  in  the  open  fields,  is  a  mystery ; 
perhaps  they  go  elsewhere  at  night,  or  crawl  into  holes ; 
but  you  may  meet  them  scudding  across  the  uplands  every 
month  of  the  year,  keeping  company  with  the  few  meadow- 
larks  that  remain. 

All  this  month,  in  hedge -rows,  wooded  hollows,  and 
thickets,  beside  springs  of  water,  where  very  likely  you 
may  flush  a  woodcock,  will  be  heard  the  low  warble  of  the 
tree-sparrows,  northern  cousins  of  the  trilling  chippy  of  our 
lilac-bushes,  and  of  the  pretty  field-sparrow  that  from  every 
green  pasture  calls  out,  C-r-e-e-p,  c-r-e-e-p,  c-r-e-e-p,  catcttm, 
catcKm)  catcKm !  as  my  mother  used  to  phrase  it  for  me. 
They  receive  the  name  from  the  habit  of  taking  to  the 
trees  when  disturbed,  instead  of  diving  into  the  bushes  and 
skulking  away  as  do  the  other  sparrows ;  but  the  less  com- 
mon name,  Canada  sparrow,  is  better.  Once  in  awhile 
they  come  into  the  towns :  I  saw  one  yesterday  in  the 
horse-chestnut  in  front  of  my  window,  which  seemed  to 
be  finding  plenty  to  eat  about  the  bark  and  scanty  leaves 
that  remained,  until  the  English  sparrows  got  news  of  his 
presence  and  drove  him  away  in  their  buccaneering  style. 


OUR  WINTER  BIRD  IS.  129 

These  same  outrageous  English  sparrows  are  the  most  con- 
spicuous, really,  of  all  our  January  birds.  They  are  spread- 
ing widely  through  the  suburbs  of  the  city,  especially  be- 
tween here  and  Philadelphia ;  and  I  am  sorry  to  see  it,  for 
they  are  uncompromising  enemies  to  all  our  native  birds. 

It  would  lead  me  to  far  overstep  the  reasonable  limits 
of  this  essay  if  I  attempted  to  extend  to  all  the  winter 
birds  even  the  brief  sketch  I  have  given  of  some  of  the 
woodland  species.  A  mere  mention  must  suffice. 

Some  birds  besides  those  already  noticed  are  residents 
with  us  the  year  round :  thus  a  few  robins,  bluebirds,  crows, 
bluejays,  cedar- birds,  kingfishers,  flickers,  blackbirds,  pur- 
ple finches,  wild  pigeons,  quails,  grouse,  and  woodcocks,  are 
always  likely  to  be  found  in  the  neighborhood  of  New 
York  in  January;  while  one  or  t\vo  of  the  arctic  wood- 
peckers, the  Canada  jay,  the  waxwing,  and  some  other  rari- 
ties, may  be  met  with  at  long  intervals.  Of  the  birds  of 
prey,  we  have  in  greater  or  less  numbers  this  month  the 
golden  and  bald  eagles  (about  the  Palisades),  an  occasional 
osprey,  the  rough -legged,  red- shouldered,  and  red -tailed 
buzzards,  the  marsh-harrier,  and  some  others ;  and,  among 
owls,  the  fierce  snowy  owl,  which  will  take  a  grouse  from 
its  roost,  or  carry  off  a  hare ;  the  barred,  great  horned,  long- 
eared,  short-eared,  mottled,  and  little  saw-whet  owls.  Along 

9 


130  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

the  adjacent  shores  of  Long  Island  and  New  Jersey  are 
seen  the  various  sea -ducks,  "coots,"  and  geese;  the  loon, 
and  an  occasional  northern  sandpiper,  like  the  splendid 
purple  one ;  the  herring,  kittiwake,  laughing,  black-backed, 
and  several  other  gulls;  and  irregularly  certain  wandering 


THE  WAXWING. 


sea-birds  whose  lives  are  not  so  much  affected  by  climatic 
conditions  as  are  those  of  the  land-birds. 

Deprived  of  the  small  reptiles,  the  young  of  squirrels 
and  other  mammals,  eggs,  and  the  large  night-flying  moths 
and  beetles  which  in  summer  form  a  good  portion  of  their 
subsistence,  the  predaceous  birds  become  more  tierce  in  win- 
ter than  at  any  other  time,  and  exercise  all  their  cunning 


OUR   WINTER  BIRDS.  131 

in  the  pursuit  of  such  meadow-mice  and  other  animals  as 
are  imprudent  enough  to  step  out  of  their  subnivean  gal- 
leries, or  in  the  capture  of  weaker  birds.  The  few  late 
fish-hawks  remain  by  the  sea-shore,  plunging  in  now  and 
then  for  their  finny  prey,  which  the  bald  eagle  very  often 
compels  them  to  relinquish  to  him.  The  golden  eagle,  cov- 
ering the  landscape  with  keen  and  comprehensive  glance 
as  he  sweeps  over  in  vast  circuits,  swoops  upon  hares,  foxes, 
and  the  like,  sometimes  even  picking  up  an  early  lamb,  or 
catching  a  grouse  before  it  can  baffle  its  dreaded  pursuer 
by  burying  itself  in  the  snow.  The  buzzard  and  marsh- 
hawk  sail  low  over  the  meadows  in  slow  and  easy  flight,  or 
stand  motionless  above  some  elevated  spot  in  the  lowlands, 
watching  intently  until  a  mole,  or  shrew,  or  mouse,  shows 
itself  below,  when  they  drop  upon  it  like  a  shot,  and  carry 
it  off  before  the  poor  victim  has  time  to  recover  from  its 
palsy  of  terror.  Less  frequently  do  these  species  seem  to 
catch  birds,  and  between  Christmas  and  Easter  they  lead  a 
very  precarious  existence.  The  owls,  too,  must  "live  by 
their  wits,"  but,  being  nocturnal,  they  have  the  advantage  of 
the  birds,  and,  we  may  be  sure,  snatch  many  a  tender  one 
rudely  from  its  roost  in  the  open  trees,  although  the  dense 
twigs  and  sharp  needles  of  the  cedars  and  other  close- 
boughed  evergreens  must  offer  such  obstacles  to  the  rapid 


132 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 


passage  of  the  owl  as  to  allow  many  an  intended  victim  to 
escape.     The  larger  species,  as  the  fanner  well  knows,  will 


UNWELCOME  ! 


often  in  continued  cold  weather  come  into  the  very  barn- 
yard and  carry  off  his  chickens;  while  the  nocturnal  habits 
of  most  of  the  smaller  mammals  not  hibernating  in  Janu- 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  133 

ary  lead  them  abroad  when  the  owls  are  mostly  flying,  and 
on  moonlight  nights  these  prowlers  get  many  a  good  meal, 
no  doubt. 

It  would  seem,  therefore,  as  if  the  chances  of  death  pre- 
sented to  the  lesser  winter  birds  by  scarcity  of  food,  rigor 
of  climate,  hawks  by  day  and  owls  by  night,  outnumbered 
the  chances  of  life  offered  by  their  alertness  and  enduring 
vitality.  But  there  are  some  additional  circumstances  fa- 
vorable to  their  escape  from  the  latter  fate,  their  resources 
against  starvation  and  freezing  having  already  been  ex- 
plained. One  of  these  circumstances  is  the  vigilance  of 
the  birds:  they  never  are  forgetful.  Sometimes  their  curi- 
osity leads  them  into  danger,  or  an  enemy  like  man,  which 
they  do  not  suspect,  may  approach  them  by  being  very 
quiet;  but  a  hawk  could  never  insinuate  himself  into  a 
sparrow's  good  graces,  nor  could  an  owl  win  his  confidence ; 
both  must  trust  to  surprising  him  or  overtaking  him  in  an 
open  race,  which  is  about  as  difficult  as  "  catching  a  weasel 
asleep."  Then  the  hiding-places  of  the  birds  in  hollow 
trees,  crannies  in  walls,  dense  thickets,  and  brush-piles,  dur- 
ing the  night  and  in  bad  weather,  are  such  as  afford  excel- 
lent security  from  their  nocturnal  winged  enemies,  although 
quite  accessible  to  foxes  and  weasels.  It  is  a  curious  fact 
that  fourteen  or  fifteen  of  our  January  birds  choose  hollows 


134  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

in  trees  or  holes  in  the  ground  for  nesting-places,  as  though 
consciously  profiting  by  their  experience  of  the  security 
afforded. 

Another  very  important  circumstance  favoring  the  pres- 
ervation of  small  birds  at  this  season  is  the  fact  that  in  the 
majority  of  cases  the  tints  of  their  plumages  are  precisely 
such  as  best  harmonize  with  the  surroundings  in  which 
they  are  most  often  seen,  and  thus  make  them  less  discern- 
ible than  they  otherwise  might  be.  Looking  through  our 
list  of  winter  birds,  many  striking  examples  of  this  pro- 
tective coloration  are  found — more,  in  proportion,  than  in 
summer,  when  there  does  not  seem  to  be  so  great  need  of 
individual  safety,  and  the  "  struggle  for  existence  "  is  not 
narrowed  down  to  such  a  strait,  and  beset  with  so  many 
difficulties.  The  kinglets,  for  instance,  spend  their  time 
in  flitting  about  the  tops  of  the  trees,  and  their  plumage  is 
found  to  be  a  dusky  green,  like  an  old  leaf,  while  the  fiery 
crowns  which  both  wear  are  concealed,  except  at  moments 
(of  love -passion,  I  imagine)  when  they  wish  to  display 
them.  Easier  to  detect  than  the  kinglets,  yet  plainly  dress- 
ed, are  the  titmice  and  nuthatches ;  but  these  frequent 
widely  different  scenes,  and,  moreover,  have  compensating 
advantages  beyond  most  other  birds  in  the  habit  of  living 
mostly  in  the  deep  woods  where  diurnal  birds  of  prey  are 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS.  135 

uncommon,  and  at  night  of  secreting  themselves  in  small 
holes  where  the  owls  cannot  get  at  them.  This  is  also  true 
of  the  small  spotted  woodpeckers,  which,  nevertheless,  are 
very  inconspicuous  objects  upon  the  dead  and  white  trunks 
they  frequent. 

The  brown  and  white  streaks  of  the  creeper  (Certhia 
americcwa),  however,  seem  to  me  to  furnish  a  decided  case 
of  protective  colors  in  plumage,  since  they  harmonize  so 
exactly  with  the  rough,  cracked  bark  along  which  the 
creeper  glides,  that  the  wee  bird  is  hardly  to  be  followed 
by  the  eye  at  a  moderate  distance.  Again,  no  coat  would 
better  help  the  wren  to  scout  unobserved  about  the  tangled 
thickets  and  through  the  piles  of  wind -drifted  leaves  in 
and  out  of  this  and  that  shadowy  crevice  than  the  plain 
brown  one  he  wears;  while  the  lighter  tints  of  the  gold- 
finch's livery  are  precisely  those  which  agree  with  the  rus- 
set weeds  and  grass  whose  harvest  he  diligently  gathers. 
The  group  of  exclusively  boreal  birds  seems  especially  pro- 
tected from  harm  by  the  correspondence  of  their  coat  and 
their  surroundings.  Their  home  is  among  the  evergreens, 
where  an  occasional  dead  branch  or  withered  stem  relieves 
the  verdancy  with  yellowish  patches,  and  the  thick-hanging 
cones  dot  the  tree  with  spots  of  ^reddish-brown ;  their  plu- 
mage is  mottled  with  green,  tints  of  yellow  and  brown,  an 


136  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

inconspicuous  red,  and  a  little  black  and  white — just  the 
colors  one's  eye  takes  in  at  a  glance  as  he  looks  at  a  hem- 
lock. The  practical  result  for  our  eyes  (or  a  falcon's)  is, 
that  the  pine-grossbeaks  and  finches,  the  crossbills  and 
purple  finches,  blend  with  the  foliage  and  cones  and  dead 
branches  until  they  are  lost  to  any  but  the  most  attentive 
gaze.  The  snow-bunting  rejoices  in  a  cloak  of  white,  and* 
thus  mingles  inextricably  to  the  eye  with  the  feathery 
flakes  he  whirls  among,  while  his  companion,  the  longspur, 
is  almost  equally  ghostly.  .  All  the  winter  sparrows  are  of 
the  brown  color  of  the  sere  grass,  withered  leaves,  and 
broken  branches  among  which  they  dwell,  except  the  slaty 
snow-bird,  and  he  is  of  a  neutral  tint,  easily  lost  to  view  in 
a  shadow. 

This  protection  of  adaptive  colors  is  not  enjoyed  to  any 
great  extent  by  the  robin,  bluebird,  meadow-lark,  cardinal- 
grossbeak,  and  kingfisher — but  none  of  these  are  "  winter" 
birds  here,  properly  speaking,  but  only  loiterers  behind  the 
summer  host,  and  ought  really  to  be  excluded  from  the 
comparison ;  nor  by  the  crow,  crow- blackbirds,  bluejay, 
Canada  jay,  and  butcher-bird — but  these  are  all  large  and 
strong,  able  for  the  most  part  to  defend  themselves;  while, 
on  the  contrary,  the  colorjs  of  the  large  but  timid  and  de- 
fenceless woodcock,  quail,  and  grouse  are  highly  protective. 


OUR   WINTER  BIRDS.  137 

Birds  of  prey  themselves  scarcely  need  such  protection 
from  one  another,  yet  some  of  them  regularly  exchange 
their  summer  plumage  for  a  winter  dress  of  lighter  and 
(in  the  general  white  of  the  landscape)  less  conspicuous 
tints ;  but  this  may  operate  to  their  advantage  in  the  re- 
verse way  of  allowing  them  to  attain  a  closer,  because  un- 
observed, approach  to  their  quarry.  This  leaves  us,  among 
the  land-birds,  only  the  bright  red-poll  and  the  wax  wings 
as  exceptions  to  the  supposed  rule  that  the  plumages  of 
winter  birds  are  colored  in  a  way  directly  favorable  to  their 
special  preservation  at  that  season  of  augmented  danger. 
They  are  cases  of  which  I  have  no  account  to  give  other 
than  that — let  me  beg  the  reader  charitably  to  believe — 
these  are  the  exceptions  which  "  favor  the  rule." 

But  against  one  persecutor  no  concealment  of  natural 
color  or  artful  device  avails,  and  the  brains  of  the  pretty 
songsters,  so  full  of  wit  to  avoid  other  enemies  and  provide 
for  each  day's  need,  are  his  choice  repast.  This  dainty 
tyrant  wears  an  overcoat  of  bluish  ash  trimmed  with  black 
and  white,  a  vest  of  white  marked  with  fine,  wavy,  trans- 
verse lines,  white  knee-breeches,  and  black  stockings.  His 
eyes  are  dark  and  piercing ;  his  nose  Napoleonic ;  his  fore- 
head high  arid  white ;  his  mustache  as  heavy  and  black  as 
that  of  any  cavalier  in  Spain.  This  Mephistopheles  among 


138  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

birds  is  a  ruffian,  truly,  yet  with  polish  and  a  courage  with- 
out bravado  which  commend  him.  Being  an  outlaw  in  the 
avian  kingdom,  he  can  only  maintain  himself  by  adroit- 
ness and  force,  but  has  such  singular  impetuosity,  prudence, 
and  fortitude,  that  he  is  not  only  able  to  keep  himself  and 
his  retainers  in  health  and  wealth  and  happiness,  but  to 
gratify  his  blood-thirsty  love  of  revenge  by  killing  number- 
less innocents  without  mercy.  Thus  he  has  struck  terror 
to  %the  heart  of  every  feathered  inhabitant  of  the  January 
woods.  Like  Caesar,  he  knows  and  joyously  endures  hun- 
ger and  cold  and  thirst.  Is  it  biting,  freezing  weather,  and 
blinding  snow?  Little  cares  he;  he  can  then  the  more 
easily  surprise  his  benumbed  prey.  Is  it  a  wrarm,  sap-start- 
ing, inviting  day?  He  is  at  the  festival  of  the  birds  —  a 
fatal  intruder  into  many  a  happy  circle.  His  favorite  perch 
is  the  high  rider  of  some  lonely  fence,  where  he  quietly 
waits  till  a  luckless  field-mouse  creeps  out  and  he  is  able 
to  pounce  upon  it;  or  an  incautious  sparrow  or  kinglet 
dashes  past,  unconscious  of  the  watchful  foe  who  seizes  him 
like  a  flash  of  lightning.  Having  felled  his  quarry  with  a 
single  blow,  he  returns  to  his  fence-post  and  eats  the  brains 
— rarely  more — or  perhaps  does  not  taste  a  single  billful, 
but  impales  the  body  upon  a  thorn,  or  hangs  it  in  an  angle 
of  the  fence,  as  a  butcher  suspends  his  quarters  of  beef.  It 


OUR  WINTER  BIRDS. 


139 


used  to  be  thought  this  murderer  thus  impaled  nine  cap- 
tives, and  no  more,  so  he  was  christened  nine-killer;  the 
book-men  labelled  him  Collurio  borealis ;  we  know  him  as 
the  butcher-bird :  he  is  the  arctic  brother  of  the  shrikes, 
and  the  boldest,  bravest,  noblest,  and  wickedest  of  his  sav- 
age race. 


VI. 

THE  BUFFALO  AND   HIS 

PERHAPS  no  indigenous  animal  of  this  country  has  at- 
tracted more  attention  or  met  with  a  greater  number  of 
biographers  than  the  bison  or  buffalo.  Its  history  has 
been  a  tale  of  extermination,  and  a  very  short  time  will  be 
likely  to  see  the  last  of  these  noble  beasts  roaming  over 
the  plains.  For  hundreds  of  years  a  small  remnant  of  the 
ancient  herds  of  aurochs,  the  native  European  bison,  have 
been  preserved  in  the  parks  of  the  nobility ;  but  in  this 
"free"  country  not  even  this  means  of  safety  seems  left 
to  our  persecuted  buffalo. 

To  the  Spanish  colonists  the  American  bison  was  com- 
monly known  under  the  name  of  civola,  while  the  French 
usually  called  it  le  bceuf,  huffle,  vache  sauvage,  or  bison 

*  A  review  of  Prof.  J.  A.  Allen's  "  The  Bison,  Past  and  Present,  in  this  Coun- 
try," forming  Part  II.  of  Volume  I.  of  the  "  Memoirs  of  the  Geological  Survey 
of  Kentucky,"  Prof.  N.  S.  Shaler,  Geologist,  in  charge ;  also  reprinted  by  the 
Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology  as  one  of  its  "  Memoirs."  Cambridge,  1875. 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  143 

d'Amerique.  Peter  Kalm,  who  travelled  through  Amer- 
ica in  1749,  spoke  of  them  as  wilde  oehsen  and  kuhe.  But 
the  word  buffalo — at  first  spelled  ~buffelo — soon  replaced  the 
earlier  names.  Scientific  men  claim  that  our  species  (Bison 
americanus,  Smith)  should  be  called  bison,  as  "  buffalo  "  is 
applicable  only  to  the  East  Indian  genus  Bubalus. 

It  appears  that  our  bison  has  already  outlived  at  least 
two  other  races,  which  exceeded  it  in  size — the  Bison  lati- 
frons  and  the  Bison  antiquus.  The  former  was  contem- 
porary with  the  mastodon,  and  was  an  ox  of  gigantic  bulk, 
the  tips  of  whose  horns  were  eleven  or  twelve  feet  apart, 
and  which  probably  stood  as  high  as  an  elephant.  Of  the 
latter  species  more  abundant  remains  have  been  dug  up, 
particularly  from  the  ice-cliffs  at  Escholtz  Bay,  on  the  Arc- 
tic coast  north  of  Alaska.  This  fossil  ox  was  of  smaller 
size  than  the  Bison  latifrons,  but  much  larger  than  the  ex- 
isting buffalo,  although  not  greatly  different  from  it  in 
form.  It  seems  to  have  been  spread  over  the  northwestern 
half  of  the  continent  from  the  Ohio  Valley  to  Alaska,  its 
remains  occurring  everywhere  with  those  of  the  larger  ex- 
tinct mammalia,  yet  it  may  have  survived  to  a  compara- 
tively recent  date. 

With  the  appearance  of  the  buffalo,  which  only  a  few 
decades  ago  swarmed  in  prodigious  herds  over  nearly  a 


144  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

third  of  North  America,  all  are  familiar.  The  male  meas- 
ures about  nine  feet  from  the  muzzle  to  the  insertion  of 
the  tail ;  the  female  about  six  and  a  half  feet.  The  height 
to  the  top  of  the  hump  of  the  male  is  five  and  a  half  to  six 
feet,  and  of  the  female  about  five  feet,  sloping  in  each  case 
to  a  height  at  the  hips  of  four  and  a  half  to  four  feet.  The 
weight  of  the  old  males  is  nearly  two  thousand  pounds, 
while  the  cows  weigh  one  thousand  to  twelve  hundred 
pounds.  The  horns  are  short,  thick  at  the  base,  curved, 
and  sharply  pointed ;  the  hoofs  are  short  and  broad  ;  the 
short  tail  ends  in  a  tuft  of  long  hairs.  In  winter  the  head 
and  whole  under  parts  are  blackish  brown ;  the  upper  sur- 
face lighter,  fading  as  spring  advances.  Young  animals 
are  of  a  darker,  richer  brown  than  the  old  ones,  age  bleach- 
f  ing  the  thick  masses  of  long,  woolly  hair,  which  falls  so 
abundantly  over  the  shoulders  and  face,  to  a  light  yellow- 
ish-brown. In  the  spring  the  hinder  parts  are  almost  naked 
through  the  moulting  of  the  hair,  while  that  upon  the  shag- 
gy fore  parts  remains  permanently.  Pied  coats  are  occa- 
sionally met,  and  examination  and  measurements  of  skulls 
and  skeletons  show  much  individual  variation  in  form  and 
proportions. 

As  is  well  known,  the  buffalo  is  pre-eminently  gregarious 
—herds  numbering  millions  of  individuals,  and  blackening 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  147 

the  whole  landscape,  having  formerly  been  met  with  con- 
stantly on  the  plains.  Emigrant  trains  used  to  be  delayed 
by  the  passing  of  dense  herds,  and  during  the  first  years  of 
the  Kansas  Pacific  Hallway  its  trains  were  frequently  stop- 
ped by  the  same  cause.  These  masses  seem  to  have  some 
sort  of  organization,  consisting  of  small  bands  which  unite 
in  migration  or  when  pursued,  but  separate  when  feeding. 
The  cows,  with  their  calves  and  the  younger  animals,  are 
generally  toward  the  middle  of  the  small  herd,  while  the 
older  bulls  are  found  on  the  outside,  and  the  patriarchs  of 
the  herd  bring  up  the  rear.  Much  romancing  has  been 
wasted  on  this  simple  and  natural  grouping  by  writers  who 
have  described  the  supposed  regularity  and  almost  military 
precision  of  their  movements.  The  sluggish,  partly-disa- 
bled old  males  constitute  the  "lordly  sentinels"  of  such 
tales,  who  are  supposed  to  watch  with  fatherly  care  over 
the  welfare  of  their  "  harems."  The  truth  is,  that  these 
protectors,  fancied  so  alert,  are  the  most  easily  approached 
of  any  of  the  flock,  and  the  real  guardians  are  the  vigilant 
cows  themselves,  who  usually  lead  the  movements  of  the 
herd. 

The  rutting-season  is  July  and  August.  The  period  of 
pregnancy  is  nine  months,  and  rarely  more  than  a  single 
calf  is  born,  which  follows  the  mother  for  a  year  or  more. 


148  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

During  the  rutting-season  the  bulls  wage  tierce  battles,  but 
they  rarely  result  fatally.  The  short  horns  are  not  very 
dangerous  weapons,  and  the  masses  of  hair  on  the  forehead 
break  the  force  of  the  stunning  collisions.  At  this  season 
the  bulls  become  lean,  regaining  their  flesh  in  autumn,  while 
the  cows  are  fattest  in  June.  During  its  moulting  in  mid- 
summer the  animal  possesses  a  very  ragged  and  uncouth 
appearance,  the  hair  hanging  here  and  there  in  matted, 
loosened  patches,  with  intervening  naked  spaces ;  and  it  en- 
deavors to  free  itself  from  this  loosened  hair  by  -rubbing 
against  rocks  and  trees,  or  rolling  on  the  ground.  The 
coats  are  in  prime  condition  for  robes  in  December. 

The  buffalo  is  nomadic  in  its  habits,  roaming  in  the 
course  of  the  year  over  vast  areas  in  search  of  food  or 
safety.  The  fires  that  annually  sweep  across  thousands  of 
square  miles  of  the  grassy  plains,  the  ravages  of  grasshop- 
pers, often  destroying  equally  extensive  tracts  of  vegeta- 
tion, and  the  habit  of  keeping  in  compact  herds,  which 
soon  exhaust  the  herbage  of  a  single  region,  all  compel  con- 
stant movement.  There  is  a  popular  belief  that  the  buffa- 
loes used  to  migrate  from  the  northern  plains  to  Texas  in 
fall  and  back  again  in  spring,  but  this  seems  erroneous. 
Before  the  intersection  of  the  West  by  railroads  and  emi- 
grant trails  their  movements  were  more  regular,  no  doubt, 


THE  SIGNAL.— BUFFALO  HERD  IN   SIGHT. 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  151 

than  at  present,  and  slight  northward  arid  southward  mi- 
grations are  well  attested  as  occurring  in  Texas  and  also  on 
the  Saskatchewan  plains ;  but  the  herds  constantly  winter 
as  far  north  as  the  latter  region,  and  for  twenty-five  years 
have  not  passed  southward  even  to  the  Platte.  In  the  ex- 
treme north  they  leave  the  exposed  plains  in  winter  and 
take  shelter  among  the  wooded  hills.  Such  local  move- 
ments as  these  were  formerly  very  regular,  and  hunters 
knew  just  where  to  look  for  their  game  at  any  season  of 
the  year. 

The  behavior  of  the  buffaloes  is  very  much  like  that  of 
domestic  cattle,  but  their  speed  and  endurance  seem  to  be 
far  greater.  When  well  under  way  it  takes  a  fleet  horse 
to  overtake  them,  and  they  raise  a  column  of  dust  which 
marks  their  progress  when  miles  away.  They  swim  rivers 
with  ease,  even  amid  floating  ice,  and  show  a  surprising 
agility  and  expertness  in  making  their  way  down  precip- 
itous cliffs  and  banks  of  streams,  plunging  headlong  where 
a  man  would  pick  his  way  with  hesitation.  Ordinarily, 
however,  the  buffalo  exhibits  commendable  sagacity  in  his 
choice  of  routes,  usually  taking  the  easiest  grades  and  the 
most  direct  course,  so  that  a  buffalo-trail — often  worn  deep 
into  the  ground — can  be  depended  on  as  affording  the  most 
feasible  road  through  the  region  it  traverses. 


152  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

When  belligerent,  the  old  bulls  make  the  most  blustering 
demonstrations,  but  are  really  cowardly.  Facing  the  ap- 
proaching hunter  with  a  boastful  and  defiant  air,  they  will 
pace  to  and  fro,  threateningly  pawing  the  earth,  only  to 
take  to  their  heels  the  next  moment.  The  bulls  greatly 
enjoy  pawing  the  earth  and  throwing  it  up  with  their 
horns,  digging  into  banks  or  getting  down  upon  one  knee 
to  strike  into  the  le\7el  surface,  so  that  the  sheaths  of  their 
horns  are  always  badly  splintered.  They  are  very  fond,  too, 
of  rubbing  themselves,  and  evidently  regard  the  telegraph- 
poles  along  the  railroads  as  set  there  for  their  especial  con- 
venience in  this  respect.  A  line  of  telegraph  was  built 
between  Helena,  Montana,  and  Fort  Benton.  But  it  was 
found  impracticable  to  maintain  it  beyond  Fort  Shaw, 
where  the  mountains  end,  and  when  I  passed  there  in  1877 
the  attempt  had  been  abandoned.  The  buffaloes  pushed 
the  poles  down,  and  then  getting  entangled  in  the  wire, 
broke  it  to  pieces.  Fragments  of  this  wire,  twisted  about 
their  horns,  were  carried  many  miles,  and  are  still  occasion- 
ally picked  up  by  hunters  all  over  the  grassy  uplands  that 
stretch  so  boundlessly  northward  from  the  upper  Missouri. 

But  their  chief  delight  is  "  wallowing."     Finding  in  the  ' 
low  parts  of  the  prairie  a  little  stagnant  water  among  the 
grass,  or  at  least  the  surface  soft  and  moist,  an  old  bull 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  153 

plunges  his  horns  into  the  ground,  tearing  up  the  earth  and 
soon  making  an  excavation  into  which  the  water  trickles, 
forming  for  a  short  time  a  cool  and  comfortable  bath,  in 
which  he  wallows  like  a  hog  in  the  mire,  swinging  himself 
round  and  round  on  his  side,  and  thus  enlarging  the  pool 
until  he  is  nearly  immersed.  At  length  he  rises  besmeared 
with  a  coating  of  mud,  which,  drying,  insures  him  immu- 
nity from  insect  pests  for  many  hours.  Others  follow, 
each  enlarging  the  "  wallow-"  until  it  becomes  twenty  feet 
in  diameter,  remains  a  prominent  feature  in  the  landscape, 
and  forms  a  cistern  where  a  grateful  supply  of  water  is 
often  long  retained  for  the  thirsty  denizens  of  that  dry 
region,  both  animal  and  human. 

Like  the  other  species  of  the  bovine  group,  the  bison  is 
of  sluggish  disposition,  and  mild  and  timid,  ferocious  as  his 
shaggy  head  and  vicious  eye  make  him  look.  He  rarely 
attacks,  except  in  the  last  hopeless  effort  of  self-defence. 
"  Endowed  with  the  smallest  possible  amount  of  instinct," 
says  Colonel  E.  I.  Dodge,  "  the  little  he  has  seems  adapted 
rather  for  getting  him  into  difficulties  than  out  of  them. 
If  not  alarmed  at  sight  or  smell  of  a  foe,  he  will  stand  stu- 
pidly gazing  at  his  companions  in  their  death-throes  until 
the  whole  herd  is  shot  down.  He  will  walk  unconsciously 
into  a  quicksand  or  quagmire  already  choked  with  strug- 


154:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

gling,  dying  victims."  Having  made  up  his  mind  to  go  a 
certain  way,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  swerve  him  from  his 
purpose,  and  he  will  rush  heedless  into  sure  destruction. 
Two  trains  were  "  ditched  "  in  one  week  on  the  Atchison, 
Topeka,  and  Santa  Fe  Kailroad  by  herds  of  buffaloes  rush- 
ing blindly  against  and  in  front  of  them.  Finally  the  con- 
ductors "got  the  idea,"  and  gave  the  original  occupants  of 
the  soil  the  right  of  way  whenever  they  asked  it.  Daring 
a  voyage  that  I  made  down  the  upper  Missouri  in  1877, 
our  steamer  more  than  once  had  to  stop  to  allow  swimming 
herds  to  get  out  of  the  way,  and  once  we  completely  keel- 
hauled a  sorry  old  bull.  Yet,  as  Mr.  Allen  suggests,  their 
inertness  may  be  exaggerated  by  writers,  as  their  sagacity 
certainly  has  been.  This  stupidity,  unwariness,  or  liability 
to  demoralizing  panic,  places  them  at  the  mercy  of  the 
hunter,  who  is  their  only  enemy  besides  the  wolves.  In  for- 
mer times,  young  or  weak  animals  straying  from  the  herds, 
and  all  the  wounded  and  aged  that  could  be  separated  from 
their  fellows,  were  quickly  set  upon  and  worried  to  death 
by  wolves ;  but  now  these  brutes  have  become  so  reduced 
as  not  to  form  a  serious  check  upon  their  increase. 

The  early  explorers  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  believed 
that  the  buffalo  might  be  made  to  take  the  place  of  the 
domestic  ox  in  agricultural  pursuits,  and  at  the  same  time 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  157 

yield  a  fleece  of  wool  equal  in  quality  to  that  of  the  sheep ; 
but  no  persistent  attempts  have  yet  been  made  to  utilize  it 
by  domestication.  That  the  buffalo-calf  may  be  easily  rear- 
ed and  thoroughly  tamed  has  been  conclusively  proved, 
but  little  attention  has  been  paid  to  their  reproduction  in 
confinement,  or  to  training  them  to  labor.  During  the  last 
century  they  were  domesticated  in  various  parts  of  the 
colonies,  and  interbred  with  domestic  cows,  producing  a 
half-breed  race  which  is  fertile,  and  which  readily  amalga- 
mates with  the  domestic  cattle.  The  half-breeds  are  large, 
fine  animals,  possessing  most  of  the  characteristics  of  their 
wild  parentage.  They  can  be  broken  to  the  yoke,  but  are 
not  so  sober  and  manageable  in  their  work  as  the  tame 
breed — sometimes,  for  instance,  making  a  dash  for  the  near- 
est water,  with  disastrous  results  to  the  load  they  are  draw- 
ing. It  is  somewhat  difficult,  also,  to  build  a  fence  which 
shall  resist  the  destructive  strength  of  their  head  and  horns. 
But  the  efforts  at  taming  buffaloes  have  not  been  many,  or 
seriously  carried  on,  and  no  attempt  appears  to  have  been 
made  to  perpetuate  an  unmixed  domestic  race.  Probably 
after  a  few  generations  they  would  lose  their  natural  un- 
tractableness,  arid  when  castrated  would  doubtless  form  su- 
perior working-cattle,  from  their  greater  size,  strength,  and 
natural  agility. 


158  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

"  The  fate  of  extermination  so  surely  awaits,  sooner  or 
later,  the  buffalo  in  its  wild  state,  that  its  domestication  be- 
comes a  matter  of  great  interest,  and  is  well  worthy  the  at- 
tention of  intelligent  stock-growers,  some  of  whom  should 
be  willing  to  take  a  little  trouble  to  perpetuate  the  pure 
race  in  a  domestic  state.  The  attempt  can  be  hardly  regard- 
ed otherwise  than  as  an  enterprise  that  would  eventually 
yield  a  satisfactory  and  profitable  result,  with  the  possibili- 
ty of  adding  another  valuable  domestic  animal  to  those  we 
now  possess." 

The  precise  limit  of  the  range  of  the  buffalo  when  the 
first  Europeans  visited  America  is  still  a  matter  of  uncer- 
tainty, yet  its  boundaries  at  that  time  can  be  established 
with  tolerable  exactness.  It  was  beyond  doubt  almost  ex- 
clusively an  animal  of  the  prairies  and  the  woodless  plains, 
ranging  only  to  a  limited  extent  into  the  forested  districts 
east  of  the  Mississippi  River.  The  results  of  the  present 
exhaustive  inquiries  seem  to  show  that  its  extension  to  the 
northward,  east  of  the  Mississippi,  was  limited  by  the  Great 
Lakes.  Contrary  to  the  supposition  of  several  recent  writ- 
ers, Mr.  Allen  has  not  been  able  to  find  a  single  mention  of 
its  occurrence  within  the  present  limits  of  Canada,  New 
England,  or  New  York  State,  although  the  name  of  the 
city  of  Buffalo  and  the  neighboring  "  Buffalo  Creek  "  prob- 


LJ 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  161 

ably  imply  that  this  animal  once  extended  its  travels  to 
that  point.  All  the  supposed  references  to  its  being  seen 
on  the  St.  Lawrence,  or  in  Canada  West,  turn  out  to  mean 
the  elk  —  the  same  indefinite  terms  being  often  used  for 
both  by  early  writers — or  else  to  apply  to  some  part  of  the 
broad  territory  then  called  Canada,  but  not  now  included 
within  its  limits.  Changes  in  political  boundaries  have 
constantly  to  be  borne  in  rnind  in  studying  ancient  nar- 
ratives. 

Furthermore,  no  remains  of  the  bison  have  been  found 
among  the  bones  in  the  shell-heaps  along  the  Atlantic  coast, 
and  there  is  no  unquestionable  evidence,  among  all  the 
early  lists  of  the  natural  products  of  the  country,  of  its  oc- 
currence anywhere  on  the  seaboard  north  of  the  Potomac 
for  a  long  period  preceding  the  discovery  of  the  continent 
by  Europeans.  The  only  well -authenticated  instances  of 
its  being  found  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge  are  the  apparently 
casual  passage  of  small  herds  through  the  mountains  from 
West  Virginia  into  the  upper  parts  of  North  and  South 
Carolina  by  way  of  the  New,  Holston,  and  French  Broad 
rivers.  They  seem  to  have  been  common  on  the  savannahs 
about  the  heads  of  rivers  in  the  western  parts  of  those 
states ;  but  it  is  well  attested  that  they  never  came  down 

to  the  sea -coast.     Nor  can  good  evidence  be  shown  that 

11 


162  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

they  ever  reached  any  part  of  Georgia,  Florida,  or  Alabama 
(although  possibly  Mississippi),  as  at  present  bounded,  not 
appearing  habitually  to  have  penetrated  south  of  the  Ten- 
nessee River — unless  just  along  the  bank  of  the  Father  of 
Waters — on  account  of  the  thickness  of  the  forest. 

The  records  in  general,  then,  show  that  at  the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  century  the  range  of  the  buffalo  east  of 
the  Mississippi,  with  the  exception  of  its  occasional  appear- 
ance on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Alleghanies  in  the  Caro- 
linas  and  Virginia,  was  restricted  to  the  area  drained  by 
the  Ohio  River  (except  over  the  lowlands  at  its  mouth), 
and  to  the  eastern  tributaries  of  the  Mississippi  in  northern 
Wisconsin  and  Minnesota;  also  that  it  was  very  numerous, 
and  uniformly  distributed  over  the  prairies  of  Illinois  and 
Indiana,  and  also  about  the  upper  tributaries  of  the  Ohio ; 
but  less  numerously  and  uniformly  over  Ohio,  West  Vir- 
ginia, Kentucky,  western  Pennsylvania,  and  the  northern 
portion  of  Tennessee,  being  everywhere  restricted  to  the 
prairies  and  scantily  wooded  land  along  the  streams. 

In  the  appendix  to  Mr.  Allen's  admirable  monograph, 
Professor  N.  S.  Shaler  offers  a  short  discussion  of  the  prob- 
able age  of  the  bison  in  the  Ohio  Valley.  In  the  swamps 
surrounding  the  "salt-licks"  of  Kentucky,  buffalo -bones 
are  found  packed  in  great  quantities  in  the  mucky  soil,  but 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  163 

only  about  the  latest  vents  of  the  saline  waters,  which 
have  from  time  to  time  changed  their  points  of  escape 
from  the  ground.  The  caverns  of  Kentucky  and  Tennes- 
see, which  were  the  homes  of  the  aboriginal  people  of  the 
region,  and  receptacles  for  their  dead,  and  where  have  been 
found  skeletons  of  the  beaver,  deer,  wolf,  bear,  and  many 
other  mammals,  have  never  yielded  any  bones  of  the  bison. 
Moreover,  among  all  the  many  figures  of  animals  and  birds 
found  on  the  pottery  and  ornaments  of  the  prehistoric  races 
of  the  West,  the  marked  form  of  the  buffalo  does  not  ap- 
pear, making  it  presumable  that  this  animal  was  unknown 
to  the  people  who  built  the  mounds.  Professor  Shaler  is  of 
the  opinion,  held  by  many  ethnologists,  that  the  "  mound- 
builders  "  were  essentially  related  to  the  Natchez  group  of 
Indians,  and  were  driven  southward  by  ruder  tribes  of  red- 
men  from  the  north  and  north-west.  The  Indians  north  of 
the  Ohio  are  known  to  have  been  much  in  the  habit  of 
burning  the  forests,  and  no  doubt  the  invaders  alluded 
to  above  signalized  their  advance  by  such  conflagrations. 
This  making  of  plains  by  the  repeated  burning  of  forests, 
aided  by  "  the  continued  decrease  of  the  rainfall,  which  was 
a  concomitant  of  the  disappearance  of  the  glacial  period," 
permitted  the  buffalo  to  advance  rapidly  eastward  as  far  as 
the  Alleghanies,  and,  coincidently,  as  far  as  the  mound- 


164  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

building  people  appear  to  have  settled  the  country.  Its 
advent  thus  seems  to  have  been  singularly  recent. 

The  question  of  the  origin  of  the  buffalo  and  its  relation 
to  the  earliest  tribes  of  people  in  the  Ohio  Valley  is  made 
still  more  complicated  by  the  fact  that  an  earlier  and  close- 
ly related  species  of  buffalo,  probably  coeval  with  the  mam- 
moth and  musk-ox,  and  possibly  with  the  caribou  and  elk, 
was  living  at  the  time  just  following  the  close  of  the  gla- 
cial epoch.  "I  am  strongly  disposed  to  think,"  writes  Pro- 
fessor Shaler,  "  that  in  the  Bison  americanus  we  have  the 
descendant  of  the  Hison  latifrons,  modified  by  existence 
in  the  new  conditions  of  soil  and  climate  to  which  it  was 
driven  by  the  great  changes  closing  the  last  ice  age."  But 
he  adds  that  future  explorations  will  probably  show  that 
there  was  an  interval  of  some  thousands  of  years  between 
the  two  species  along  the  Ohio. 

Although  the  main  chain  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  has 
been  supposed  commonly  to  form  the  western  limit  of  the 
range  of  the  buffalo,  there  is  abundant  proof  of  its  former 
existence  over  a  vast  area  westward,  including  a  large  part 
of  the  Utah  basin,  the  Green  Eiver  plateau,  and  the  plains 
of  the  Columbia,  as  far  as  the  Blue  Mountains  of  Ore- 
gon and  the  Sierra  Nevada.  Evidence  of  this  is  found  in 
the  bleached  skulls,  in  accounts  of  early  explorers,  and  in 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  165 

traditions  of  the  Indians.  During  the  very  severe  and 
snowy  winter  of  1836-'37  large  herds  were  lost  through 
starvation ;  by  1840  it  had  retreated  eastward  to  the  forks 
of  the  Yellowstone,  and  been  extirpated  in  the  Utah  Val- 
ley and  about  the  head -waters  of  the  Colorado;  and  ten 
years  later  was  never  to  be  found  west  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  between  the  British  possessions  and  the  Rio 
Grande  del  Norte.  Westward  of  this  great  river  it  does 
not  seem,  within  the  past  two  centuries,  to  have  extended 
itself  at  all  into  the  highlands  of  New  Mexico ;  but,  farther 
south,  there  is  proof  of  its  former  range  over  the  north- 
eastern provinces  of  Mexico  to  at  least  the  twenty-fifth  par- 
allel, though  it  was  never  abundant  there,  and  abandoned 
that  region  before  the  beginning  of  the  current  century. 

The  great  centre  of  buffalo-life  in  ages  past  was  the  vast 
expanse  of  treeless  plains  which  stretch  uninterruptedly 
from  the  Texas  coasts  almost  to  the  Arctic  Circle,  and  here, 
in  restricted  areas,  they  have  been  able  to  survive  until  the 
present  time. 

When  Cabega  de  Yaca  met  the  buffaloes  in  1530  they 
ranged  throughout  nearly  all  Texas,  the  higher  prairie- 
lands  of  north-western  Louisiana  and  Arkansas,  and  thence 
uniformly  northward  and  westward.  But  soon  after  1820 
they  disappeared  altogether  from  Arkansas,  and  were  not 


166  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

seen  in  western  Missouri  and  southern  Iowa  later  than 
1825;  but  immense  herds  still  roamed  over  the  northern 
half  of  the  latter  State.  Since  1845,  however,  few  have 
been  seen  anywhere  within  Iowa,  nor  did  they  linger  many 
years  longer  in  Minnesota. 

The  stream  of  emigration  across  the  plains  to  California 
about  1859  had  a  curious  and  permanent  effect  on  the  buf- 
faloes. The  overland  route  followed  up  the  Kansas  and 
Platte  rivers,  and  thence  westward  by  the  North  Platte  to 
the  South  Pass.  The  buffaloes  were  soon  all  driven  from 
this  line  of  travel ;  and  the  great  herd  which  had  stretched 
from  the  Rio  Grande  to  the  Saskatchewan  was  permanent- 
ly divided  into  two  —  a  northern  and  a  southern  herd  — 
which  were  more  and  more  widely  separated  by  the  con- 
struction of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad.  Year  by  year 
since,  the  limits  of  the  range  of  each  division  have  been 
contracting  under  relentless  persecution  and  the  encroach- 
ments of  civilization,  until  now  they  are  easily  circum- 
scribed. The  poor  beasts  have  been  hunted  by  the  In- 
dians, have  been  followed  incessantly  by  white  men — pro- 
fessional hunters,  sportsmen,  hide  -  seekers,  and  soldiers, 
who  have  been  afforded  easy  access  to  their  haunts  by  the 
railroads  that  have  penetrated  to  their  ancient  pastures, 
and  been  given  the  means  of  keeping  up  the  hunt  by  the 


THE  BUFFALO  AND  HIS  FATE.  169 

nearness  of  the  frontier  settlements  to  the  resorts  of  each 
herd.  Enormous  destruction  has  ensued  in  Kansas  and 
Colorado,  and  has  had  the  effect  to  drive  the  southern  di- 
vision southward  and  south-westward  into  Texas,  where 
hunters  cannot  or  (on  account  of  Indians)  dare  not  follow 
them.  They  are,  therefore,  just  now  afforded  a  tempo- 
rary rest  from  persecution  ;  but,  unless  legal  interference 
be  quickly  made  and  strict  regulations  rigorously  enforced, 
the  fate  of  the  buffalo  south  of  the  Platte  will  be  a  repeti- 
tion of  its  history  east  of  the  Mississippi — speedy  extermi- 
nation. 

As  to  the  northern  herd,  while  twenty  years  ago  buffaloes 
were  accustomed  to  frequent  the  whole  region  between  the 
Missouri  River  and  the  forty-ninth  parallel,  from  the  west- 
ern boundary  of  Dakota  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  even 
far  into  their  valleys,  they  are  now  restricted  to  the  com- 
paratively small  area  drained  by  the  southern  tributaries  of 
the  Yellowstone,  and  northward  over  the  most  of  Montana 
to  the  Missouri.  North  of  the  Missouri  River  almost  a 
separate  subdivision  of  the  herd  seems  to  exist,  which  feeds 
between  longitude  106°  and  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 
northward  to  the  wooded  region  of  the  Athabasca  and 
Peace  rivers.  Within  thirty  years  they  have  become  ex- 
tirpated over  half  of  this  fertile  region  north  of  our  boun- 


170  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

dary,  and  their  numbers,  probably,  have  correspondingly 
decreased. 

It  thus  appears  that  in  three-quarters  of  a  century  the 
buffalo  has  been  compelled  to  relinquish  a  habitat  cover- 
ing a  third  of  the  continent  for  two  regions  not  greater 
together  than  the  present  Territories  of  Montana  and  Da- 
kota ;  and  they  were  formerly  just  as  numerous  over  the 
whole  extent  as  they  now  are  in  favored  spots  within  their 
range.  Hence  the  theory  that  they  have  riot  been  so  much 
reduced  in  numbers  as  they  have  been  circumscribed  in 
range  and  concentrated  upon  narrow  limits,  will  not  hold 
good.  Over  much  of  this  great  region  they  were  actually 
killed  on  the  spot,  not  driven  out. 


VII. 

THE  SONG-SPARROW. 

THE  American  song- sparrow  is  a  peculiar  lover  of  old 
fields  where  Nature  is  fast  reasserting  herself  after  the  tem- 
porary rule  of  man.  The  tumbling,  lichen -patched  stone 
fences ;  the  gray  cattle- paths  diverging  from  the  muddy 
bar-way  to  those  parts  of  the  pasture  where  the  grass  is 
sweetest ;  the  weedy  banks  of  the  sluggish  brook  wind- 
ing indolently  among  mossy  bowlders  and  tangled  thickets 
and  patches  of  fragrant  herbage — are  all  congenial  to  it, 
and  are  its  chosen  resort.  Yet  it  is  so  common  throughout 
most  of  the  United  States  that  you  may  find  it  almost  any- 
where— skulking  about  the  currant  and  raspberry  bushes 
in  the  village  gardens ;  taking  a  riotous  bath  in  some  pool 
by  the  roadside,  about  whose  rim,  perhaps,  the  ice  still  lin- 
gers;  hastening  to  the  top  of  a  forest -tree  to  plume  its 
dripping  feathers,  and  shake  off  at  once  the  crystal  water 
and  a  crystal  song. 

Our  favorite  is  the  very  first  bird  to  greet  us  in  the 


172  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

spring — in  fact,  many  remain  through  the  winter  as  far 
north  even  as  Boston  and  Lake  Erie.  It  is  thought  by 
ornithologists,  however,  that  the  winter  song-sparrows  are 
not  the  same  individuals  that  were  with  us  in  summer,  and 
which  have  gone  southward,  but  are  inhabitants  of  more 
northern  latitudes,  that  have  come  down  wTith  the  snow- 
birds; and  it  is  said  that  these  are  far  hardier  birds,  better 
and  more  versatile  musicians. 

During  the  winter  the  song-sparrow  remains,  quiet  and 
busy,  along  the  edges  of  the  woods  on  warm  hill-sides  in 
company  with  the  spotted  woodpeckers  and  snow-birds,  or 
associates  with  the  fowls  in  the  barn-yard  for  a  share  of  the 
housewife's  bounty.  But  as  the  March  snow  melts,  and  the 
sun  sends  genial  warmth  to  awaken  the  buds,  he  mounts 
the  topmost  twigs  of  the  brush  pile  whose  labyrinths  he  has 
spent  the  winter  in  exploring,  and  pours  forth  a  rapturous 
welcome  to  the  couriers  of  summer.  Then  through  all  the 
spring  days,  whether  they  be  shady  or  sunny,  from  early 
morn  till  long  after  sunset,  are  heard  the  sweet  and  cheery 
cadences  of  his  song,  trilled  out  over  and  over  again  like  a 
canary's.  He  starts  off  with  a  few  low  rattling  notes,  makes 
a  quick  leap  to  a  high  strain,  ascends  through  many  a  melo- 
dious variation  to  the  key-note,  and  suddenly  stops,  leaving 
his  song  to  sing  itself  through  in  your  brain.  To  amplify 


THE  SONG-SPARROW.  173 

another's  illustration,  it  is  as  though  he  said  "  press-press- 
PRESS- BY -TEEEE-RiAN-m/i/"  His  clear  tenor,  the  gur- 
gling, bubbling  alto  of  the  blackbirds,  the  slender  purity 
of  the  bluebird's  soprano,  and  the  solid  basso  profundo  of 
the  frogs,  with  the  accompaniment  of  the  April  wind  pip- 
ing on  the  bare  reeds  of  winter,  or  the  drumming  of  rain- 
drops, form  the  naturalist's  spring  quartette — as  pleasing,  if 
not  as  grand,  as  the  full  chorus  of  early  June. 

The  song  of  the  sparrow  varies  in  different  individuals, 
and  often  changes  with  the  season.  A  single  bird  has  been 
observed  through  several  successive  summers  to  sing  nine 
or  ten  different  sets  of  notes,  usually  uttering  them  one 
after  another  in  the  same  order  over  arid  over.  Careful 
attention  will  show  almost  any  of  our  songsters  to  vary 
their  melodies  from  time  to  time,  but  none  have  greater  in- 
dividuality than  our  subject.  "  Last  season,"  writes  John 
Burroughs,  "  the  whole  summer  through,  one  sung  about 
my  grounds  like  this :  swee-e-t,  swee-e-t,  sweet,  bitter.  Day 
after  day,  from  May  to  September,  I  heard  this  strain, 
which  I  thought  a  simple  but  very  profound  summing  up 
of  life,  and  wondered  where  the  little  bird  had  learned  it  so 
quickly.  The  present  season  I  heard  another  with  a  song 
equally  original,  but  not  so  easily  worded.  Among  a  large 
troop  of  them  in  April,  my  Attention  was  attracted  to  one 


174  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

that  was  a  master  songster — some  Shelley  or  Thomson 
among  its  kind.  The  strain  was  remarkably  prolonged,  in- 
tricate, and  animated,  and  far  surpassed  anything  I  ever  be- 
fore heard  from  that  source." 

Occasionally  the  song-sparrow  sings  on  the  wing  while 
dropping  to  the  ground  from  the  top  of  a  high  tree — a 
favorite  perch  in  early  spring ;  and  during  the  mating  sea- 
son many  strange  modifications  of  his  tune  strike  the  ear. 
As  the  summer  comes  on,  his  song,  in  common  with  that 
of  all  other  birds,  is  less  often  repeated  until  it  almost 
ceases  in  the  fall ;  yet  it  may  be  heard,  by  an  observing 
listener,  every  month  in  the  year.  His  call  to  his  mate  is 
a  simple  chuck  or  hwit. 

Earely  leaving  his  native  copses  until  late  in  autumn,  he 
has  little  need  to  exert  large  powers  of  flight,  and  moves 
from  one  low  bush  to  another  with  a  jerking,  undulatory 
motion.  His  home  is  near  the  ground,  and  it  is  only  the 
excitement  of  love  which  in  spring  prompts  the  males  to 
seek  the  tree-tops. 

His  food  is  principally  procured  from  the  ground  and 
among  the  branches  and  leaves  of  the  wild  shrubbery,  and 
consists  of  blossoms,  seeds,  berries,  and  insects,  varying  ac- 
cording to  the  season  and  the  age  of  its  nestlings.  Early 
in  spring  he  is,  as  Mr.  Gentry  puts  it,  "a  vegetarian,"  living 


THE  SONG-SPARROW.  175 

upon  the  blossoms  of  the  red  maple  and  other  early-bloom- 
ing forest-trees,  green  ginger-berries,  and  the  seeds  of  veg- 
etables, in  search  of  which  it  frequents  the  kitchen-gardens, 
and  associates  with  the  noble  fox-sparrows  and  chattering 
goldfinches.  As  warm  weather  advances,  the  song-spar- 
row leaves  the  gardens,  and  seeks,  in  wilder  spots,  less  of 
vegetable  and  more  of  animal  food  —  eating  strawberries, 
wild  cherries,  raspberries,  etc.,  now  and  then  as  a  relish ; 
but  depending  for  regular  fare  upon  the  young  of  the  in- 
sect world  just  hatching  out.  It  would  be  quite  impossi- 
ble to  enumerate  all  the  kinds  eaten  ;  probably  everything 
palatable  is  welcome.  I  remember  one  June  day  watching 
one  little  fellow  industriously  picking  very  minute  lice-like 
bugs  from  the  under-side  of  the  leaves  of  an  apple-tree. 
He  seemed  inordinately  fond  of  them,  and  swallowed  twen- 
ty or  thirty  a  minute,  uttering  the  while  a  quick  metallic 
chirp.  Many  kinds  of  caterpillars  he  likewise  devours, 
among  them  clothes'  moths  and  the  loathsome  tent-cater- 
pillar, that  stretches  its  canopied  webs  among  the  twigs  of 
our  orchard  and  shade  trees,  and  drops  dowrn  upon  our 
heads  in  all  its  ugly  nastiness ;  also  ants,  earthworms,  and 
young  beetles. 

When  the  insects  mature,  and  betake  themselves  beyond 
his  easy  reach,  small  fruits  still  remain  ;  and,  as  these  grad- 


176  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ually  disappear,  he  gives  himself  up  more  and  more  to  a 
strictly  graminivorous  diet,  breaking  open  the  seed-vessels 
stored  up  by  the  wilderness  of  weeds  growing  in  every 
field  which  the  farmer  has  let "  run  to  waste  "  for  himself, 
but  only  thus  cultivated  the  more  for  the  sparrows.  There 
is  always  enough  of  this  material,  either  in  the  unbroken 
pods  or  fallen  to  the  ground,  to  last  through  the  winter 
such  adventurous  birds  as  brave  our  snows,  screening  them- 
selves from  the  chilling  blast  in  recesses  of  the  dense  thick- 
ets, or  taking  shelter  under  piles  of  logs  and  brush. 

During  the  latter  part  of  April,  in  ordinary  seasons,  the 
song-sparrow  finds  himself  married,  and  he  and  his  wife  be- 
gin to  construct  their  home.  The  site  chosen  is  the  green 
bank  of  some  meadow  brook,  a  tussock  beside  a  country 
road,  a  hollow  under  some  decaying  log,  where  the  nest 
shall  be  well  secreted  in  a  little  thicket  of  grasses  and  flow- 
ers, or,  in  many  cases,  on  bushes,  vines,  or  even,  as  Mr.  J. 
S.  Howland  assures  me,  in  an  old  broken  woodpecker's  hole 
in  an  apple-tree.  A  friend  in  Astoria,  Long  Island,  on 
May  8th,  1877,  found  a  pair  of  these  sparrows  snugly  en- 
sconced in  an  ivy  growing  along  the  inner  wall  of  a  green- 
house. The  birds  had  evidently  watched  their  opportuni- 
ty when  the  door  was  open  or  the  glass  raised  during  the 
warm  days,  and  constructed  their  nest  and  deposited  three 


THE  SONG-SPARROW.  177 

eggs  before  they  were  discovered.  In  1875  they  built  a 
nest  in  the  same  place,  and  the  year  before  on  the  ground 
against  the  wall  just  outside.  A  pair  has  been  around 
there  for  a  great  while ;  a  nest  being  found  within  a  hun- 
dred feet  of  the  spot  for  some  six  or  seven  years.  Wher- 
ever placed,  it  is  a  model  and  poetic  bird-dwelling. 

"What  care  the  bird  has  taken  not  to  disturb  one  straw 
or  spear  of  grass,  or  thread  of  moss  !  You  cannot  approach 
it  and  put  your  hand  into  it  without  violating  the  place 
more  or  less,  and  yet  the  little  architect  has  wrought  day 
after  day,  and  left  no  marks.  There  has  been  an  excava- 
tion, and  yet  no  grain  of  earth  appears  to  have  been  moved. 
If  the  nest  had  slowly  and  silently  grown,  like  the  grass 
and  the  moss,  it  could  not  have  been  more  nicely  adjusted 
to  its  place  and  surroundings.  There  is  absolutely  nothing 
to  tell  the  eye  it  is  there.  Generally  a  few  spears  of  dry 
grass  fall  down  from  the  turf  above,  arid  form  a  slight 
screen  before  it.  How  commonly  and  coarsely  it  begins, 
blending  with  the  debris  that  lies  about,  and  how  it  refines 
and  comes  to  the  centre,  which,  is  modelled  so  perfectly, 
and  lined  so  softly." 

Grasses  are  the  timbers  of  the  house — coarse  stalks  upon 
the  outside,  fine  stems  and  soft  leaves  twined  within ;  the 
edge  of  the  nest  overcast.  It  seems  to  be  well  proved  that 

12 


178  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

the  nests  found  on  the  ground  are  built  by  young  birds, 
while  older  and  more  experienced  sparrows  place  their 
houses  in  vines  and  small  trees,  finding  that  at  a  little  height 
they  are  less  liable  to  danger;  furthermore,  these  nests 
built  at  an  elevation,  being  more  exposed  to  the  wind  and 
less  braced,  are  more  compactly  and  skilfully  constructed 
than  those  on  the  ground,  the  projecting  ends  of  the  straws 
being  neatly  interwoven,  or  tied  down,  so  as  to  present  a 
tolerably  smooth  exterior.  The  nests  in  the  tussocks  seem 
manufactured  chiefly  out  of  the  dead  stems  of  crab-grasses 
and  other  stuff  within  easy  reach;  but  a  variety  of  sub- 
stances enter  into  the  composition  of  the  elevated  nests, 
such  as  flowering  weeds,  narrow  leaves,  paper,  strips  of 
bark,  and  raw  cotton  (which  sometimes  thatches  the  whole 
outside),  with  horse-hair  and  milk-weed  silk  to  give  addi- 
tional softness  to  the  lining.  When  circumstances  favor,  a 
sort  of  sheltering  platform  is  arranged  over  the  nest  in  the 
tree  or  vines ;  just  as  frequently  the  approach  to  the  nest 
hidden  in  the  meadow  lies  through  a  tunnel  like  a  field- 
mouse's  path  under  the  tall  grasses. 

The  labor  of  building  occupies  the  attention  of  the  pair 
during  the  cool  of  the  mornings  and  evenings  of  four  or 
five  busy  days.  Both  birds  work  diligently,  the  male 
bringing  the  materials,  and  the  female  adjusting  them. 


THE  SONG-SPARROW.  179 

The  day  after  the  nest  is  done  an  egg  is  laid,  and  one  more 
each  succeeding  day  until  there  are  five;  and  very  hard  to 
distinguish  from  the  eggs  of  several  other  ground-building 
sparrows  they  are.  The  ground-color  runs  through  all  in- 
termediate tints  from  grayish  or  brownish  white  to  decided 
green.  The  blotching  is  generally  profuse,  and  often  con- 
fluent into  a  wreath  about  the  large  end,  the  colors  being  un- 
derlying purples  and  bright  brown  surface  painting.  They 
are  inclined  to  be  thick  and  blunt  rather  than  elongated, 
and  will  average  about  .90  by  .60  of  an  inch.  I  can  find 
no  variations  worth  stating  between  the  eggs  of  the  differ- 
ent varieties.  Those  from  the  Pacific  coast  appear  to  be 
the  largest,  and  those  from  southern  localities  the  smallest ; 
but  the  variety  in  size,  shape,  ground-color,  and  pattern  is 
almost  limitless,  and  I  repeat  that  the  strongest  identifica- 
tion is  necessary  to  make  sure  between  these  eggs  and  those 
of  the  swamp-sparrow,  the  grass-finch,  the  Zonotrichice,  and 
several  other  members  of  the  family. 

The  female  sits  eleven  or  twelve  days,  occasionally  re- 
lieved by  the  male  while  she  takes  a  brief  rest.  He  assidu- 
ously provides  her  with  food  from  hour  to  hour,  but  spends 
all  his  leisure  at  home,  ready  to  resist  invasion  or  insult, 
and  enlivening  the  tedium  of  her  sitting  with  his  love 
ditties. 


180  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

When  the  young  are  born,  both  parents  are  exceedingly 
devoted  to  their  wants,  carefully  removing  every  trace  of 
the  old  egg-shells  and  all  foul  matter  far  from  the  nest,  and 
working  with  great  energy  to  keep  the  hungry  mouths  till- 
ed. The  nestlings  are  fed  upon  the  young  of  many  small  in- 
sects, and  as  they  grow  older  are  given  larger  larvae — -earth- 
worms, house-flies,  plant-lice,  ants,  and  small  night-flying 
moths.  When  twelve  or  thirteen  days  old,  the  young  birds 
leave  the  nest,  and  in  ten  days  more  have  learned  to  care 
for  themselves.  Meamvhile  the  mother  has  abandoned 
them  to  the  father's  guidance,  and  busies  herself  in  the 
construction  of  a  new  home  for  a  second  family.  Although 
left  strong  and  neat,  the  first  nest  rarely  seems  to  be  used 
again ;  but  the  new  one  is  built  in  close  proximity  to  it. 
As  before,  the  male  is  dutiful  and  loving,  and  the  second 
brood  is  brought  out  in  July,  or  sometimes  earlier,  so  that 
even  a  third  brood  can  be  raised.  But  accidents  or  climate 
generally  prevent  this  degree  of  success. 

In  autumn  the  song- sparrows  are  to  be  seen  dodging 
about  stone  walls,  roadside  thickets,  and  old  pastures,  in  lit- 
tle family  companies  of  six  or  eight,  no  doubt  consisting  of 
parents  with  their  second  brood  of  young,  which  remain 
together  in  happy  idleness,  and  move  southward  at  their 
leisure. 


THE  SONG-SPARROW.  181 

Here  the  younger  sons  appear  to  have  an  advantage  over 
their  elder  brethren  of  the  first  brood,  who  are  early  sent 
out  to  seek  their  fortunes,  in  that  they  enjoy  the  continued 
example  and  counsel  of  their  parents  during  many  weeks 
after  they  may  be  said  to  have  "  come  of  age,"  although 
possibly  they  may  chafe  under  the  restraints  of  paternal 
guidance,  not  to  say  old-fogyism,  from  which  the  young- 
sters of  the  first  brood  are  now  gayly  delivered;  but  it 
would  not  be  wonderful  if  it  could  be  shown  that  the  next 
year  this  latter  brood,  profiting  by  distasteful  discipline,  ex- 
celled in  nest-building  and  in  general  prosperity  over  the 
others,  who  had  enjoyed  less  advantages  in  the  way  of  home 
education.  Here  is  a  new  factor  in  the  problem  of  natural 
selection. 


VIII. 

CIVILIZING   INFLUENCES. 

To  say  that  the  settlement  of  North  America  has  pro- 
duced a  marked  effect  upon  the  animal  life  of  the  conti- 
nent, and  upon  the  birds  as  a  part  of  the  fauna,  may  seem 
too  much  of  a  truism  to  be  worth  discussion.  Yet  the 
degree  to  which  this  effect  has  been  felt,  and  the  various 
ways  in  which  man's  influence  has  been  exerted  upon  ani- 
mals, may  still  be  objects  of  interesting  inquiry.  I  confine 
myself  alone  to  the  effects  produced  by  the  white  man,  be- 
cause the  Indian  seems  to  have  caused  hardly  an  apprecia- 
ble change,  either  for  good  or  evil,  in  the  comparative  plen- 
itude, or  in  the  habits,  of  the  creatures  dwelling  about 
him.  He  himself  was  really  as  wild  and  indigenous  as 
they,  hunting,  like  the  carnivores,  purely  for  food,  and,  with 
the  osprey,  fishing  only  when  his  wants  were  urgent ;  his 
mind  was  too  grim  to  entertain  the  idea  of  pursuing  ani- 
mals for  sport,  and  his  civilization  too  limited  to  cause 
much  disturbance  of  natural  conditions. 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  183 

r 

During  the  last  two  and  a  half  centuries  white  men  have 
spread  everywhere,  and  in  almost  every  part  of  the  conti- 
nent their  machinery  has  replaced  the  original  simplicity 
of  nature.  Thousands  of  square  miles  of  forest  have  been 
cleared,  marshes  have  been  drained,  rivers  obstructed  and 
tormented  with  mill-wheels,  and  cities  have  sprung  up  as 
swiftly  as  the  second  growth  of  scrub  pines  follows  the 
levelling  of  an  oak  wood. 

The  inevitable  result  must  follow  that  all  our  ani- 
mals, birds  included,  would  have  been  so  harassed  by  their 
changed  surroundings  and  the  persecutions  of  human  foes, 
that  they  would  have  rapidly  disappeared.  With  the  vast 
majority  of  the  quadrupeds  this  has  actually  been  the  case. 
"  Wild  beasts  "  no  longer  haunt  our  forests,  to  the  terror  of 
the  traveller ;  nor  can  the  hunter  now  find  game  that  a  few 
decades  ago  was  abundant  almost  at  his  door.  It  has  been 
much  the  same  with  wildfowl  and  game  birds.  They  have 
deserted  their  ancient  nesting -places  within  our  borders 
for  the  safer  Arctic  heaths,  or  old  and  young  have  been  all 
but  exterminated  by  gun  and  snare.  Nevertheless,  a  large 
number  of  the  smaller  birds  of  our  woodlands  and  prairies, 
as  I  hope  to  show,  have  been  decidedly  benefited  by  the 
advent  of  white  men.  I  know  of  but  one  sort  of  quad- 
ruped— field-mice — of  which  this  can  also  be  said. 


184  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

It  is  commonly  observed  that  scarcely  any  small  birds 
are  seen  in  the  depths  of  a  forest,  but  they  become  abun- 
dant as  one  approaches  the  neighborhood  of  settlements. 
Travellers  through  Siberia  know  that  they  are  coming  near 
a  village  when  they  begin  to  hear  the  voices  of  birds,  which 
are  absent  from  the  intervening  solitudes.  Every  ornithol- 
ogist has  proved  these  facts  in  his  own  experience,  and  ex- 
plorers who  go  to  uninhabited  and  primeval  regions  have 
learned  not  to  expect  there  the  chorus  that  greets  their 
ears  from  the  great  army  of  songsters  thronging  the  fields 
in  populous  countries. 

The  song-birds  —  the  small  denizens  of  our  summer 
groves,  pastures,  and  meadows — seem,  then,  to  recognize 
the  presence  of  man's  civilization  as  a  blessing,  and  have 
taken  advantage  of  it,  both  from  love  of  human  society  and 
for  more  solid  and  prosaic  reasons. 

The  settlement  of  a  country  implies  the  felling  of  for- 
ests, the  letting  in  upon  the  ground  of  light  and  warmth, 
the  propagation  of  seed-bearing  cereals,  weeds,  and  grasses 
enormously  in  excess  of  a  natural  state  of  things,  the  de- 
struction of  noxious  quadrupeds  and  reptiles,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  horses  and  cattle.  Each  of  these  alterations  of 
nature  (except  in  some  few  cases,  like  that  of  the  relation 
of  the  woodpecker  to  the  cutting  away  of  timber)  is  a  di- 


CIVILIZING   INFLUENCES.  185 

rect  benefit  to  the  little  birds.  It  is  not  difficult  to  demon- 
strate this. 

Birds  naturally  choose  sunny  spots  in  which  to  build 
their  nests,  such  as  some  little  glade  on  the  bank  of  a 
stream ;  when  roads  were  cut  and  fields  levelled  in  the 
midst  of  sombre  woods,  the  area  suitable  for  nesting  was 
of  course  greatly  added  to,  and  a  better  chance  thus  afford- 
ed for  successfully  hatching  and  rearing  broods  of  young. 
The  way  in  which  the  wood-roads  cut  by  the  hemlock  bark- 
peelers  through  the  dense  forests  that  clothe  the  remote 
Catskills  have  become  the  haunt  of  birds  and  insects,  is  a 
capital  example  in  urging  this  point.  One  of  the  largest 
avian  families — that  of  the  sparrows,  finches,  and  buntings 
— subsists  almost  exclusively  on  seeds  of  weeds  and  grasses; 
and  the  members  of  a  large  proportion  of  other  families  de- 
pend somewhat  for  their  daily  supply  on  this  sort  of  food. 
Under  the  universal  shade  of  trees  weeds  can  grow  only 
sparingly,  and  on  prairies  the  crop  is  often  killed  by 
drought,  or  is  burnt  in  the  autumn ;  but  the  cultivation 
of  immense  fields  of  grain  and  hay,  and  the  making  of 
broad  pastures  and  half -worn  roads,  which  almost  imme- 
diately become  filled  with  weeds,  has  furnished  the  birds 
with  an  inexhaustible  and  unfailing  harvest. 

Birds  suffer  much  harm  from  many  quadrupeds — foxes, 


186  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

weasels,  skunks,  rats,  etc. — which  catch  them  on  their  roosts, 
suck  their  eggs,  and  kill  their  fledglings.  Snakes  also  are 
fond  of  them,  and  destroy  many  nests  every  season — in 
early  summer  subsisting  almost  alone  on  eggs.  All  these 
animals,  particularly  foxes,  skunks,  and  serpents,  are  great- 
ly reduced  in  number  by  settlements,  although  it  must  be 
confessed  that  their  absence  is  somewhat  compensated  for 
by  the  introduction  of  domestic  cats,  which  go  foraging 
through  the  woods,  to  the  grief  of  all  their  feathered  in- 
habitants. No  longer  in  fear  of  their  natural  enemies,  and 
learning  that  there  is  little  reason  to  be  apprehensive  of 
harm  from  mankind,  the  small  birds  forsake  their  silent, 
shy  manners,  come  out  of  the  thickets  where  they  have 
been  hiding,  and  let  their  voices  be  heard  in  ringing  tones, 
easily  interpreted  as  rejoicing  at  deliverance  from  fear,  and 
thanksgiving  for  liberty  to  sing  as  loud  as  pleases  them. 

All  small  birds  are  more  or  less  completely  insectivorous 
(even  the  cone-billed  seed-eaters  having  to  feed  their  young 
with  larvae  at  first),  and  naturally  congregate  where  this 
food  is  most  abundantly  supplied.  There  would  seem  to 
be  enough  anywhere ;  but  the  ploughing  and  manuring  of 
the  soil  facilitates  the  growth  and  increase  of  such  insects 
as  go  through  their  metamorphoses  in  the  ground ;  and  tire 
culture  of  orchards  furnishes  an  excellent  resort  for  many 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  187 

boring  and  fruit-loving  moths,  beetles,  and  the  like,  which 
find  the  best  possible  circumstances  for  their  multiplication 
in  the  diseased  trunks  and  juicy  fruit  of  the  apple,  plum, 
cherry,  and  peach.  No  part  of  the  farm  has  so  many 
winged  citizens  as  the  orchard. 

The  presence  of  horses,  cattle,  and  sheep  offers  to  flies 
and  other  insect  tribes  excellent  opportunities  for  the  safe 
rearing  of  their  eggs  in  the  dunghills  and  heaps  of  wet 
straw  always  lying  about  barns,  and  attracts  a  great  colony 
of  those  minute  beetles  upon  which  the  fly-catching  birds 
principally  maintain  themselves.  The  cattle-yard,  there- 
fore, forms  a  sort  of  game-preserve  for  such  birds,  and 
many  species  flock  thither.  Swallows  are  hardly  ever 
found  except  in  the  vicinity  of  barns;  the  cow -bunting 
receives  its  name  from  its  habit  of  constantly  associating 
with  cattle;  and  the  king-bird  finds  the  stable-yard  his 
most  profitable  hunting-ground.  Near  the  habitations  of 
men,  small  birds  also  enjoy  protection  from  hawks  and 
owls,  which  hesitate  to  venture  away  from  the  shelter  of 
the  woods,  and  whose  numbers  are  reduced,  unwisely  per- 
haps, by  incessant  persecution.* 

*  In  several  States  of  the  Union  bounties  are  offered,  sometimes  by  county 
authorities,  sometimes  by  game-protective  associations,  and  hundreds  of  hawks 
and  owls  are  killed  annually. 


188  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

The  logic  of  the  case  is  simple;  birds  will  assemble 
chiefly  where  food  for  themselves  and  their  young  is  in 
greatest  abundance,  and  where  they  are  least  exposed  to 
enemies.  These  two  prime  conditions  of  prosperity,  with 
many  favorable  concomitants,  man's  art  supplies  to  the  in- 
sessorial  birds,  which,  on  the  other  hand,  suffer  little  direct 
injury  from  his  contact.  Yet  some  species  seem  little  af- 
fected by  the  civilizing  of  the  country,  either  in  numbers 
or  habits,  while  others  increase  rapidly  on  the  first  settle- 
ment of  a  region,  and  then  decrease  again.  Of  this  class 
are  the  prairie-hen  (Oupidonia  cupido)  and  the  mallard. 
"They  find  abundance  of  food  in  the  corn  and  wheat 
fields ;  while  the  population  is  sparse  and  larger  game  so 
abundant,  they  are  hunted  very  little ;  but  as  the  popula- 
tion increases  they  are  gradually  thinned  out,  and  become 
in  some  cases  exterminated.  Other  birds,  as  the  quail,  are 
wholly  unknown  beyond  the  frontier,  and  only  appear  af- 
ter the  country  has  been  settled  a  short  time.  Still  others, 
woodland  species,  appear  in  regions  where  they  were  never 
known  before,  as  groves  of  trees  are  planted,  and  thick 
woods  spring  up  on  the  prairies  as  soon  as  the  ravages  of 
the  fires  are  checked." 

Striking  examples  of  how  some  of  our  birds  have  accept- 
ed this  tacit  invitation  to  make  men  their  confidants  occur 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  189 

in  the  history  of  the  American  swallows  and  swifts.  Our 
purple  martins  spread  themselves  in  summer  all  over  North 
America,  but  are  becoming  rare  in  the  New  England  States, 
whence  they  seem  to  have  been  driven  by  the  white-bellied 
swallows,  which  have  gradually  grown  more  numerous,  and 
which,  preceding  the  martins  in  the  spring,  take  possession 
of  all  the  boxes  put  up  for  the  accommodation  of  the  mar- 
tins, and  exclude  the  rightful  tenants  vi  et  armis.  Their 
natural  nesting -places  were  hollow  trees  and  cavities  in 
rocks;  but  now,  throughout  the  whole  breadth  of  the  land, 
it  is  rare  to  find  martins  resorting  to  such  quarters,  except 
in  the  most  remote  parts  of  the  Eocky  Mountains.  They 
have  everywhere  abandoned  the  woods,  and  come  into  the 
villages,  towns,  and  even  cities,  choosing  to  nest  in  commu- 
nities about  the  eaves  of  houses  and  barns,  and  in  sheltered 
portions  of  piazzas,  or  to  take  possession  of  garden  bird- 
boxes,  where  their  social,  confiding  dispositions  have  ren- 
dered them  general  favorites. 

A  very  similar  case  is  presented  in  the  c'ase  of  our  chim- 
ney-swift, which  finds  a  chimney  a  far  more  desirable  resi- 
dence than  a  hollow  tree  in  the  woods. 

Other  species  of  American  swallows  afford  still  more 
striking  illustrations  of  a  change  in  the  manner  of  life  ef- 
fected by  association  with  men.  Perhaps  the  most  curious 


190  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

example  is  the  case  of  the  eave- swallow  (Petrochelidon 
lunifrons).  This  bird  remained  undiscovered  until  1820 
when  it  was  met  with  by  the  celebrated  Thomas  Say  when 
naturalist  to  Major  Long's  expedition  to  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, a  memento  of  which  remains  in  the  name  of  one  of 
the  loftiest  heights  of  the  snowy  range — Long's  Peak.  In 
1825,  however,  the  bird  suddenly  appeared  at  Fort  Chip- 
pewa,  in  the  Fur  Country,  and  contentedly  built  its  nest 
under  the  eaves.  Even  earlier  it  had  been  seen  on  the 
Ohio  River,  at  Whitehall,  New  York,  and  very  soon  after 
wa$  found  breeding  in  the  Green  Mountains,  in  Maine,  in 
New  Brunswick,  and  among  the  high  limestone  cliffs  of 
the  islands  along  that  precipitous  coast.  It  occurs  also 
westward  to  the  Pacific  coast.  It  is  hardly  to  be  supposed 
that  these  swallows  were  indigenous  to  some  restricted 
locality  in  the  West,  whence  they  suddenly  made  such  a 
startling  exodus;  but  rather  it  is  believed  that  they  always 
had  existed  in  isolated  spots  all  over  the  country,  but  so 
far  apart,  and  so- uncommonly,  that  they  were  overlooked. 

The  experience  of  the  barn-swallow  (Hirundo  horreorum) 
has  been  much  the  same ;  and  the  Rocky  Mountain  swallow 
(Tachycineta  thalassina),  which  breeds  in  far-separated  col- 
onies throughout  the  mountainous  West,  is  fast  following 
its  example  in  scraping  acquaintance  with  mankind. 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  191 

r 

The  natural  breeding-place  of  all  the  three  species  I  have 
mentioned  is  in  caves  and  crevices  of  rock,  the  irregu- 
larities and  hollows  of  limestone  crags  affording  them  the 
best  chances.  "  Swallows9  Cave,"  at  Nahant,  is  remember- 
ed as  one  of  their  hospices.  I  have  seen  all  three  species 
breeding  together  among  the  ragged  ledges  of  Middle  Park, 
Colorado ;  but  considerable  differences  were  noticeable  be- 
tween the  houses  of  these  uncivilized  builders  and  those 
of  their  educated  brethren  at  the  East,  who  now,  perhaps, 
would  find  it  rather  hard  to  rough  it  as  did  their  ancestors. 

Under  the  shelter  of  warm  barns,  and  with  such  an  abun- 
dance of  food  at  hand  that  they  have  plenty  of  leisure  be- 
tween meals  to  cultivate  their  tastes  and  give  scope  to  their 
ingenuity,  our  barn  and  eave  swallows  have  shown  a  won- 
drous improvement  in  architecture.  The  nests  of  the  barn- 
swallows  that  I  saw  at  the  hot  sulphur  springs  in  Colorado 
consisted  only  of  a  loose  bed  of  straw  and  feathers,  for  the 
hollow  floors  of  the  niches  in  which  they  were  placed  form- 
ed cavity  and  barrier  for  the  safety  of  the  eggs.  Some 
nests,  resting  on  more  exposed  ledges,  had  a  rude  founda- 
tion and  rim  of  mud,  but  did  not  compare  with  the  elab- 
orate half-bowls,  lined  with  hay  and  feathers,  that  are  plas- 
tered by  the  same  species  so  firmly  against  the  rafters  of 
our  barns,  or  with  the  large  nest  that  is  balanced  on  the 


192  FMIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

beam,  with  its  edges  built  up  so  high  that  the  callow  young 
can  hardly  climb,  much  less  tumble  out,  until  quite  ready 
to  fly.  Nevertheless,  the  general  character  of  the  nest  is 
the  same ;  the  eastern,  civilized  swallows  have  only  made 
use  of  their  superior  advantages  to  perfect  the  inherited 
idea.  In  the  case  of  the  barn-swallow,  its  civilization  re- 
sults in  an  addition  to  its  pains  (is  it  not  a  natural  conse- 
quence ?),  in  that  its  nest  now  is  required  to  be  much  larger, 
more  carefully,  and  hence  more  laboriously,  made.  On  the 
other  hand,  its  neighbor,  the  eave-swallow,  has  contrived  to 
save  itself  labor  by  the  change  from  wild  life. 

This  latter  species  is  sometimes  called  the  republican 
swallow,  because  at  the  breeding -season  it  gathers  in  ex- 
tensive colonies,  where  its  homes  are  crowded  together  as 
closely  as  the  cells  in  a  honey-comb,  one  wall  often  serv- 
ing for  two  or  more  contiguous  structures.  The  nests  are 
gourd-shaped,  or  like  a  chemist's  retort,  and  are  fastened  by 
the  bulb  to  the  cliff,  generally  where  it  overhangs,  with  the 
curving  necks  opening  outward  and  affording  an  entrance 
just  large  enough  to  admit  the  owner.  This  retort  is  con- 
structed of  pellets  of  mud,  well  compacted  in  the  little  ma- 
son's beak,  and  made  adhesive  by  mixture  with  the  glue- 
like  saliva  with  which  all  swallows  are  provided.  In  this 
snug  receptacle  the  pretty  eggs  are  laid  upon  a  bed  of  soft 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  193 

straw  and  feathers.  Such  was  the  elaborate  structure  deem- 
ed necessary  by  the  swallows  so  long  as  they  nested  in  ex- 
posed places,  where  they  had  to  guard  against  the  weather 
and  crafty  enemies.  "But  since  these  birds  have  placed 
themselves  under  the  protection  of  man,  they  have  found 
that  there  is  no  longer  any  need  of  all  this  superfluous 
architecture,  and  the  shape  of  their  nest  has  been  gradually 
simplified  and  improved.  In  1857,  on  one  of  the  islands 
in  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  Dr.  T.  M.  Brewer  met  w7ith  a  large 
colony  whose  nests,  on  the  side  of  the  barn,  were  placed 
between  two  projecting  boards  put  up  for  them  by  the 
friendly  proprietor.  The  very  first  year  they  occupied 
these  convenient  quarters,  every  one  of  these  sensible  swal- 
lows built  nests  open  at  the  top,  discarding  the  old  patri- 
archal domes  and  narrow  entrances  of  their  forefathers." 
This  is  not  an  isolated  case,  but  rather  has  come  to  be  the 
rule  wherever  there  was  a  roof  over  them,  so  far  as  my  own 
observation  goes. 

The  purple  martin  and  white-bellied  swallow  both  accept 
of  houses  ready  made,  saving  themselves  all  trouble  except 
in  furnishing  them;  and  even  the  burrowing- bank  and  rough- 
winged  swallows  are  learning  that  it  is  cheaper  to  build  in 
a  snug  cranny  in  an  old  wall  than  laboriously  to  dig  a  deep 
crypt  in  a  sand-bank  wherein  to  lay  their  pearly  eggs. 

13 


FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Men's  industries  have  supplied  the  birds  with  some  new 
and  exceedingly  useful  building  materials,  such  as  furnish- 
ing those  weavers,  the  orioles  and  vireos,  with  strings  and 
yarn  for  the  warp  of  their  fabrications,  and  the  yellow-bird 
with  cotton  and  wool  to  make  her  already  downy  bed  still 
softer.  Instances  of  abnormally  late  and  early  breeding 
seem  to  be  very  common  in  England,  and  are  coming  to 
be  more  and  more  frequently  recorded  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  This  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  since  our  oper- 
ations insure  to  the  birds  a  continued  supply  of  suitable 
food,  and  thus  enable  them  to  rear  their  young  at  seasons 
when  in  a  wild  state  it  would  not  be  possible  to  do  so. 
The  English  sparrows,  breeding  all  the  year  round,  or  near- 
ly so,  in  the  parks  of  our  coast  cities,  are  a  case  in  point. 

That  civilization  lias  to  some  extent  governed  the  migra- 
tions and  geographical  distribution  of  many  species  of  our 
birds  not  directly  warred  upon  as  pot  game,  for  amuse- 
ment, or  because  they  are  obnoxious  to  crops,  could  easily 
be  shown  had  I  space  allowed  me  to  bring  forward  illustra- 
tions ;  and  when  another  two  centuries  have  rolled  around 
the  effect  will  be  very  striking.  The  mocking  and  Be- 
wick's wrens,  the  rose-breasted  grossbeak,  chestnut- sided 
warbler,  and  other  species,  have  spread  northward  and  be- 
come more  abundant  since  the  time  of  Wilson  and  Audu 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  195 

bon ;  the  bobolink  has  kept  pace  with  the  widening  culti- 
vation of  rice  arid  grain  fields ;  the  red-headed  woodpecker 
has  retreated  from  New  England ;  the  Arkansas  flycatcher 
has  multiplied  and  spread  as  a  town  bird  through  all  the 
cities  and  villages  from  Council  Bluffs  to  Denver;  the  ra- 
ven has  gradually  retired  before  the  wood-cutter,  until  it  has 
almost  ceased  to  exist ;  while  year  by  year  the  crow  has  ex- 
tended its  range,  without  seeming  in  the  least  to  diminish 
its  force  in  the  older  districts,  but  crowding  the  wild  and 
refractory  raven  farther  and  farther  beyond  the  frontier. 

Although  none  have  abandoned  their  old  way  of  life  so 
completely  as  the  swallows,  many  other  birds  have  profit- 
ed by  the  constructions  and  friendship  of  the  human  race. 
The  bluebird  and  house -wren,  chickadees  and  nuthatches 
dig  holes  in  the  fence-posts  conveniently  rotting  for  their 
use;  and  even  such  wild  species  as  the  western  flycatcher, 
great-crested  kingbird,  and  Bewick's  wren,  occasionally  at- 
tach themselves  to  mankind,  and  hatch  their  young  under 
his  roof  for  greater  security.  Even  the  whippoorwill  and 
nighthawk,  asleep  all  day  in  the  swamp,  are  glad  to  come 
to  the  farmer's  house  in  the  evening,  and  now  and  then  to 
deposit  their  eggs  on  a  flat  roof.  In  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains I  have  seen  flocks  of  white  ptarmigans  nimbly  hop- 
ping around  the  door -steps  of  miners  who  were  seeking 


196  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

silver  far  above  timber-line,  picking  up  the  crumbs  thrown 
to  them,  as  tame  as  pet  chickens. 

In  not  a  few  instances,  here  as  well  as  abroad,  supersti- 
tion brings  profit  to  our  birds.  An  honest  old  Pennsylva- 
nia Dutchman,  around  whose  barn  clouds  of  swallows  hov- 
ered, told  Wilson  that  he  must  on  no  account  shoot  any, 
for  if  one  was  killed  his  cows  would  give  bloody  milk,  and 
that  so  long  as  the  swallows  inhabited  the  barns  his  build- 
ings were  in  no  danger  of  being  struck  by  lightning.  The 
arrival  of  the  fish-hawk  or  osprey  on  the  New  Jersey  coast, 
at  the  vernal  equinox,  notes  the  beginning  of  the  fishing- 
season.  In  some  parts  of  New  England  the  appearance  of 
the  golden-winged  woodpecker  means  the  same  thing,  for 
the  bird  is  known  as  the  "shad -spirit."  The  coming  of 
both  is  therefore  hailed  with  satisfaction,  and  it  is  consid- 
ered so  "lucky"  to  have  an  osprey  nesting  upon  one's 
farm,  that  proprietors  cherish  its  huge  house  in  the  lone 
tree  with  uncommon  care,  recalling  the  reverent  fostering 
that  a  family  of  storks  will  enjoy  from  the  peasant  of  the 
Netherlands  on  whose  roof  their  nest  has  been  placed. 

The  result  of  all  these  circumstances,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
is,  that  the  aggregate  army  of  singing  birds  in  the  United 
States,  east  of  the  Mississippi,  has  been  very  considerably 
enlarged  during  the  last  two  centuries,  and  is  still  on  the 


CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES.  197 

increase.  This  can  be  owing  only  to  the  fact  that  by  cut- 
ting down  the  forests,  etc.,  civilized  man  has  tempered  the 
rigor  of  the  climate,  has  multiplied  the  sources  of  bird 
food,  has  appended  many  additional  places  suitable  for  the 
young,  and  has  enabled  more  fledglings  to  be  brought  to 
maturity  by  reducing  the  ranks  of  the  enemies  of  the  birds. 
This  has  not  only  augmented  their  number,  and  very  ap- 
preciably modified  their  habits  of  nesting  and  migration, 
but  probably  has  somewhat  changed  even  their  physical 
and  mental  characteristics.  There  is  little  doubt  in  my 
mind,  for  instance,  that  in  making  their  lives  less  laborious, 
apprehensive,  and  solitary,  man  has  left  the  birds  time  and 
opportunity  for  far  more  singing  than  their  hard-worked, 
scantily-fed,  and  timorous  ancestors  ever  enjoyed — a  privi- 
lege a  bird  would  not  be  slow  to  avail  itself  of. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  seems  to  me  equally  certain 
that  the  music  of  our  more  domestic  birds,  though  greater 
in  volume,  is  not  so  sweet  in  tone  as  that  of  their  wild- 
er brethren.  Our  foreign  street  sparrows  (the  London 
"  Jims  ")  are  naturally,  I  suppose,  rather  harsh- voiced ;  but, 
whatever  they  might  have  been  a  thousand  years  ago,  they 
could  hardly  be  otherwise  now,  when  the  rattle-te-bang  of 
the  city  pavements  has  been  their  only  teacher  for  many 
centuries.  The  mocking-bird  has  learned  to  imitate  the 


198  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

screech  of  the  ungreased  wheelbarrow  and  the  howl  of  the 
farmer's  dog — no  dulcet  sounds.  Many  of  the  noises  con- 
stantly uttered  by  men  and  evoked  by  their  work  are  any- 
thing but  melodious,  and  young  birds  born  and  bred  in 
their  midst  must  surely  turn  out  less  sweet  and  accomplish- 
ed singers  than  if  reared  among  the  gentle  whisperings  of 
leafy  woods,  and  learning  music  only  from  the  golden- 
mouthed  minstrels  of  the  sylvan  choir. 


IX. 

HOW  ANIMALS   GET  HOME. 

ONE  of  the  most  striking  powers  possessed  by  animals  is 
that  of  finding  their  way  home  from  a  great  distance,  and 
over  a  road  with  which  they  are  supposed  to  be  unacquaint- 
ed. It  has  long  been  a  question  whether  we  are  to  attrib- 
ute these  remarkable  performances  to  a  purely  intuitive 
perception  by  the  animal  of  the  direction  and  the  practica- 
ble route  to  his  home,  or  whether  they  are  the  results  of  a 
conscious  study  of  the  situation,  and  a  definite  carrying  out 
of  well-judged  plans. 

Probably  the  most  prominent  example  of  this  wonderful 
power  is  the  case  of  homing  pigeons.  These  pigeons  are 
very  strong  of  wing,  and  their  intelligence  is  cultivated  to 
a  high  degree ;  for  their  peculiar  "  gift "  has  been  made  use 
of  .since  "  time  whereof  the  memory  of  man  runneth  not 
to  the  contrary."  The  principle  of  heredity,  therefore,  now 
acts  with  much  force;  nevertheless,  each  young  bird  must 
be  subjected  to  severe  training  in  order  to  fit  it  for  those 


200  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

arduous  competitions  which  annually  take  place  among 
first-rate  birds.  As  soon  as  the  fledgling  is  fairly  strong 
on  its  wings,  it  is  taken  a  few  miles  from  the  cot  and 
released.  It  rises  into  the  air,  looks  about  it  and  starts 
straight  away  for  home.  There  is  no  mystery  about  this 
at  all ;  when  it  has  attained  the  height  of  a  few  yards  the 
bird  can  see  its  cot,  and  full  of  that  strong  love  of  home 
which  is  so  characteristic  of  its  wild  ancestors,  the  blue-rocks, 
it  hastens  back  to  the  society  of  its  mates.  The  next  day 
the  trial-distance  is  doubled,  and  the  third  day  is  still  fur- 
ther increased,  until  in  a  few  weeks  it  will  return  from  a 
distance  of  seventy  miles,  which  is  all  that  a  bird-of-the- 
year  is  "  fit "  to  do ;  and  when  two  years  old,  will  return 
from  two  hundred  miles,  longer  distances  being  left  to 
more  mature  birds.  But  all  this  training  must  be  in  a 
continuous  direction ;  if  the  first  lesson  was  toward  the 
east,  subsequent  lessons  must  also  be ;  nor  can  the  added 
distance  each  time  exceed  a  certain  limit,  for  then,  after 
trying  this  way  and  that,  and  failing  to  recognize  any 
landmark,  the  bird  will  simply  come  back  to  where  it  was 
thrown  up.  Moreover,  it  must  always  be  clear  weather. 
Homing  pigeons  will  make  no  attempt  to  start  in  a  fog,  or 
if  they  do  get  away,  a  hundred  chances  to  one  they  will  be 
lost.  Nor  do  they  travel  at  night,  but  settle  down  at  dusk 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  201 

and  renew  their  journey  in  the  morning.  When  snow  dis- 
guises the  landscape,  also,  many  pigeons  go  astray.  None 
of  these  circumstances  seriously  hampers  the  semi-annual 
migrations  of  swallows  or  geese.  They  journey  at  night, 
as  well  as  by  day,  straight  over  vast  bodies  of  water  and 
flat  deserts,  true  to  the  north  or  south.  Homing  pigeons 
fly  northward  or  southward,  east  or  west,  equally  well,  and 
it  is  evident  that  their  course  is  guided  only  by  observa- 
tion. Watch  one  tossed.  On  strong  pinions  it  mounts 
straight  up  into  the  air  a  hundred  feet.  Then  it  begins 
to  sweep  around  in  great  circles,  rising  higher  and  higher, 
until — if  the  locality  is  seventy-five  or  one  hundred  miles 
beyond  where  it  has  ever  been  before — it  will  go  almost 
out  of  sight.  Then  suddenly  you  will  see  it  strike  off  upon 
a  straight  course,  and  that  course  is  homeward.  But  take 
the  same  bird  there  a  second  time  and  none  of  these  aerial 
revolutions  will  occur — its  time  is  too  pressing,  its  home- 
sickness too  intense  for  that ;  instantly  it  turns  its  face 
toward  its  owner's  dove-cot. 

These  facts  mean  something.  They  show  that  two  defi- 
nite intellectual  processes  serve  to  decide  for  the  bird  the 
direction  he  is  to  take — observation  and  memory.  He  gets 
high  enough,  and  turns  about  times  enough,  to  catch  sight 
of  some  familiar  object,  and  he  makes  for  it ;  arrived  there, 


202  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

another  known  feature  catches  his  eye,  and  thus  by  ever 
narrowing  stages  he  is  guided  home.  Few  persons  have 
any  idea  of  the  distance  one  can  see  at  great  elevations. 
More  than  once  I  have  stood  on  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
where,  had  I  been  a  pigeon,  I  could  have  steered  my  flight 
by  another  mountain  more  than  one  hundred  miles  dis- 
tant. Balloonists  say  that  at  the  height  of  half  a  mile 
the  whole  course  of  the  Thames  or  the  Seine,  from  end  to 
end,  is  spread  out  as  plain  as  a  map  beneath  their  eyes. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  a  pigeon  may  rise  to  where  he  can 
recognize,  in  clear  weather,  a  landscape  one  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  away ;  it  has  been  done  repeatedly,  though  only 
by  the  best  birds,  specially  trained  for  that  particular  line 
of  flight.  There  is  no  greater  error  than  to  suppose  that 
carrier-pigeons  sent  a  long  distance  from  home  in  any  di- 
rection will  always  return,  as  though  attracted  by  a  load- 
stone. The  benevolent  lady  received  only  a  good-natured 
laugh  for  her  pains,  when  she  offered  to  equip  the  late 
British  Arctic  expedition  with  these  winged  messengers, 
who,  she  supposed,  could  be  despatched  from  any  point 
with  tidings,  and  have  a  fair  chance  of  getting  straight 
back  to  England. 

A  pigeon's  power  of  memory  is  really  wonderful.     Be- 
ginning with  short  stages,  perhaps  of  not  more  than  a 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  203 

dozen  miles,  the  final  stage  of  a  match-flight  of  five  hun- 
dred miles  will  be  more  than  one  hundred.  The  country 
has  been  seen  but  once,  yet  the  bird  remembers  it,  and  not 
only  for  the  three  or  four  days  of  a  match,  but  for  months. 
In  June,  1877,  birds  trained  from  Bath  to  London  were 
twice  flown.  On  June  llth  of  1878  they  repeated  the 
trip  at  good  speed.  Such  feats  are  not  uncommon  with 
Belgian  birds — the  best  of  all — and  there  have  been  sev- 
eral authenticated  instances  of  their  going  off-handed  from 
England  to  Belgium  after  having  been  kept  in  confinement 
many  months.  But  the  homing  intelligence  of  pigeons  is 
subject  to  much  irregularity  of  action,  and  this  very  cir- 
cumstance insists  that  it  shall  not  be  considered  an  unvary- 
ing, unreasoning  instinct. 

Enough  has  now  been  said,  perhaps,  to  enable  one  to  see 
that,  however  much  the  bird  may  be  aided  by  an  acute 
sense  of  direction  —  a  capability,  I  mean,  of  preserving  a 
straight  course,  once  ascertained,  which  sense  some  may 
prefer  to  speak  of  as  an  "instinct" — the  homing  faculty 
of  le  voyageur  pigeon  is  the  result  of  education,  and  is  not 
a  matter  of  intuition  at  all. 

The  bee  pursues  a  truly  similar  course.  When  he  is 
loaded  with  nectar,  you  will  note  him  cease  humming  about 
the  heads  of  the  flowers  and  spring  up  in  a  swift,  vertical 


204  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

spiral,  and  after  circling  about  a  moment,  shoot  homeward 
"in  a  bee-line."  Evidently  he  has  "got  his  bearings."  Had 
you  watched  him  the  first  time  he  ever  left  his  hive  you 
would  have  observed  precisely  similar  conduct  to  acquaint 
himself  with  the  surroundings. 

How  a  bird  like  the  albatross?  the  man-of-war-hawk,  or 
the  petrel,  swinging  on  tireless  pinions  in  apparently  aim- 
less flight  over  the  tossing  and  objectless  ocean,  suddenly 
rouses  its  reserve  of  strength  to  traverse  in  a  day  or  two 
the  hundreds  of  miles  between  it  and  the  rocky  shores 
where  it  builds  its  nest ;  or  how  it  finds  the  lone  islet 
which  these  winged  wanderers  of  the  sea  alone  render  pop- 
ulous, is  not  easily  explained.  ISTor  can  we  readily  under- 
stand how  once  a  year  the  salmon  comes  back  (from  con- 
jecture only  guesses  where),  not  to  the  coast  alone,  for 
that  would  be  no  more  than  an  ordinary  case  of  migra- 
tion, but  to  the  identical  stream  where  it  was  born ;  and 
to  prove  that  it  was  not  a  blind  emotion  that  led  it,  would 
be  harder  than  in  the  case  of  the  pigeon,  the  bee,  or  even 
the  frigate-bird.  Yet  who  knowrs  that  the  fishes  may  not 
be  able  to  perceive  the  differences  in  the  water  which  we 
designate  "  variations  of  temperature  and  density,"  or  still 
more  delicate  properties,  and  thus  distinguish  the  fluid  of 
their  native  place  from  the  outside  element?  It  is  a  que 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  205 

tion,  however,  whether  this  phenomenon  comes  properly 
within  the  scope  of  this  article. 

Many  domestic  animals  show  a  true  homing  faculty,  and 
often  in  a  degree  which  excites  our  surprise.  One  of  the 
most  remarkable  cases  I  knew  was  that  of  two  of  the  mules 
of  a  pack-train  which,  plainly  by  concerted  action,  left  our 
cainp  one  morning  without  cause  or  provocation.  We  were 
in  south-western  Wyoming,  about  seventy-five  miles  north- 
west of  Rawlins  Station,  where  we  had  begun  our  march. 
Our  course,  however,  had  been  an  exceedingly  roundabout 
one,  including  a  great  deal  of  very  bad  country,  where  no 
road  or  trail  existed.  These  mules  made  no  attempt  to 
trace  it  back,  but  struck  straight  across  the  country.  They 
were  chased  many  miles,  and  showed  not  the  least  hesitancy 
in  choosing  their  way,  keeping  straight  on  across  the  rolling 
plain,  with  a  haste  which  seems  not  to  have  been  diminished 
until  Rawlins  was  almost  reached,  when  they  were  caught 
by  some  prospectors.  For  weeks  they  had  to  be  kept  care- 
fully hobbled  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  the  experiment. 

How  did  these  animals  know  the  direction  with  such 
certainty  ?  Mules  frequently  follow  a  very  obscure  trail 
backward  for  many  miles,  and,  even  more  than  horses,  may 
be  trusted  to  find  the  way  home  in  the  dark ;  but  this  is 
only  when  they  have  been  over  the  road  before,  and  is 


206  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

quite  as  fully  due  to  their  superior  eyesight  as  to  their 
strong  sense  of  locality.  I  have  also  seen  mules  following 
the  trail  of  a  pack -train  a  few  hours  in  advance,  almost 
wholly  by  scenting;  but  the  two  runaways  before  mention- 
ed had  no  other  conceivable  help  in  laying  their  course 
than  some  distant  mountain -tops  north  and  east  of  (and 
hence  behind)  them,  and  to  profit  by  these  would  have  re- 
quired a  sort  of  mental  triangulation. 

But  the  most  common  instances  of  homing  ability  are 
presented  by  our  domestic  pets,  which  often  come  back  to 
us  when  we  have  parted  with  them,  in  a  way  quite  unac- 
countable at  first  thought.  An  extremely  instructive  series 
of  authentic  examples  of  this  were  published  in  successive 
numbers  of  that  excellent  newspaper,  the  London  Field. 
The  discussion  was  begun  by  a  somewhat  aggressive  article 
by  Mr.  Tegetmeier,  in  which  he  expressed  the  opinion  that 
most  of  such  stories  current  were  "  nonsense,"  and  cordial- 
ly assigned  to  the  regions  of  the  fabulous  those  narratives 
which  seemed  to  attribute  this  power  to  a  special  faculty 
possessed  by  the  animal,  instancing  himself  two  cases  where 
a  dog  and  a  cat  found  their  way  home,  as  he  very  justly 
supposes,  by  using  their  memories.  The  distance  was  not 
great ;  they  obtained  a  knowledge  of  the  routes,  and  took 
their  departure.  "  Very  interesting,"  replied  a  correspond 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  207 

ent,  "but  no  argument  against  another  cat  or  dog  home- 
returning  twenty  or  thirty  miles  across  a  strange  district 
by  means  of  instinct."  And  as  evidence  of  his  conclusion 
that  "  there  is  an  attribute  of  animals,  neither  scent,  sight, 
nor  memory,  which  enables  them  to  perform  the  home-re- 
turning journeys,"  this  gentleman  said  : 

"When  I  resided  at  Selhurst,  on  the  Brighton  and  South 
Coast  Railway,  a  friend  living  at  Sutton  gave  me  an  Irish 
retriever  bitch.  She  came  over  to  him  about  a  month  pre- 
viously from  the  County  Limerick,  where  she  was  bred ; 
and  during  her  stay  at  Sutton  she  was  on  chain  the  whole 
time,  with  the  exception  of  two  walks  my  friend  gave  her 
in  the  direction  of  Cheain,  which  is  in  an  opposite  quarter 
to  Selhurst  from  Sutton.  She  came  to  me  per  rail  in  a 
covered  van,  and  the  distance  from  home  to  home  is  about 
nine  miles.  She  was  out  for  exercise  next  morning,  ran 
away,  and  turned  up  at  her  previous  home  the  same  after- 
noon." 

But  this  proved  to  be  a  mild  instance  of  such  perform- 
ances. A  fox-hound  was  taken  by  train  in  a  covered  van 
forty  miles  from  the  kennels  of  one  hunt  to  those  of  an- 
other in  Ireland.  The  hound  was  tied  up  for  a  week,  and 
then  she  was  taken  out  with  the  pack.  She  hunted  with 
them  for  the  day,  and  returned  in  the  evening  to  within  a 


208  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

hundred  yards  of  the  kennel.  "  Here,"  relates  the  narra- 
tor, "  I  noticed  her  go  into  a  field,  sit  down,  and  look  about 
her.  I  called  out  to  the  young  gentleman  who  hunts  the 
hounds,  whose  way  home  was  the  same  as  mine :  <  J.,  Pre- 
cious is  not  going  on  with  you.'  '  Oh,  there's  no  fear  of 
her,'  was  the  reply.  'As  she  came  so  far,  she  will  come 
the  rest  of  the  way.'  So  we  went  on  to  the  kennel  close 
by,  but  Precious  did  not  appear,  and  we  came  back  at  once 
to  the  spot,  sounded  the  horn,  and  searched  everywhere. 
That  was  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening.  On  the  following 
morning  at  six  o'clock,  when  the  messmari  went  to  the  ken- 
nel door  at  Doneraile,  Precious  was  there." 

An  officer  took  a  pointer  which  certainly  had  never  been 
in  Ireland  before,  direct  from  Liverpool  to  Belfast,  where 
he  \vas  kept  for  six  months  at  the  barracks.  He  was  then 
sent  by  train  and  cart,  in  a  dog-box,  thirty-four  miles  into 
the  country,  and  tied  up  for  three  days.  Being  let  out  on 
the  morning  of  the  fourth,  he  at  once  ran  away,  and  was 
found  that  same  evening  at  the  barracks  at  Belfast. 

A  sheep-dog  was  sent  by  rail  and  express  wagon  from 
the  city  of  Birmingham  to  Wolverton,  but,  escaping  from 
confinement  the  next  Saturday  at  noon,  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing reappeared  in  Birmingham,  having  travelled  sixty  miles 
in  twenty-four  hours.  Says  one  writer:  "I  was  stopping 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  209 

with  a  friend  about  eighteen  miles  from  Orange,  New  South 
Wales.  My  host  brought  a  half-grown  kitten  sixteen  miles 
by  a  cross-bush  track,  tied  in  a  flour-bag  at  the  bottom  of  a 
buggy.  She  was  fed  that  night ;  in  the  morning  she  had 
disappeared.  She  was  home  again  in  rather  less  than  four 
days."  The  same  person  owned  a  horse  in  the  interior  of 
Australia,  which,  after  two  years  of  quiet  residence  on  his 
run,  suddenly  departed,  and  was  next  heard  of  one  hundred 
miles  away,  at  the  run  of  the  old  master  from  whom  it  had 
been  stolen  years  before. 

A  rough-coated  cur  was  taken  by  a  gentleman  to  whom 
he  had  been  given  from  Manchester  to  Liverpool  by  train, 
thence  to  Bangor,  North  Wales,  by  steamboat;  but  on 
landing  at  Bangor  the  dog  ran  away,  and  the  fourth  day 
afterward,  fatigued  and  foot -sore,  was  back  in  his  home 
kennel,  having  undoubtedly  travelled  straight  overland  the 
whole  distance.  The  same  gentleman  knew  of  a  kitten 
that  was  carried  in  a  covered  basket  six  miles  from  one 
side  of  Manchester  to  the  other,  and  found  its  way  back 
the  next  day  through  the  turbulent  streets.  Similarly,  a 
fox-hound  transported  in  a  close  box  between  points  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  distant,  and  part  of  the  way 
through  the  city  of  London,  came  back  as  soon  as  let 
loose.  A  retriever  bitch  did  the  same  thing  from  Hud- 

14: 


210  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

dersfield  to  Stroud,  a  fortnight  after  being  taken  to  the 
former  place  by  rail;  and  a  fox-hound  returned  from  Kent 
to  Northamptonshire,  which  are  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
Thames;  finally  a  dog  came  back  to  Liverpool  from  a  dis- 
tant point,  whither  he  had  been  forwarded  by  rail  in  the 
night. 

So  many  such  instances  are  recorded  that  I  refrain  from 
mentioning  more,  except  a  couple  of  very  illustrative  ones 
which  I  find  vouched  for  in  the  Eev.  J.  Gr.  Wood's  valuable 
little  book,  "Man  and  Beast."  A  mechanic  who  worked 
in  Manchester,  but  lived  at  Holy  well,  Wales,  having  been 
home  on  a  visit,  wTas  given  a  dog  to  take  back  with  him. 
"He  led  the  animal  from  Holy  well  to  Bagill  by  road,  a  dis- 
tance of  about  two  miles.  Thence  he  took  the  market-boat 
to  Chester,  a  distance  of  about  twelve  miles,  if  I  remember 
right.  Then  he  walked  through  Chester,  and  took  rail  for 
Birkenhead.  From  that  station  he  walked  to  the  landing- 
stage,  and  crossed  the  Mersey  to  Liverpool.  He  then  walk- 
ed through  Liverpool  to  the  station  in  Lime  Street.  Then 
he  took  rail  to  Manchester,  and  then  had  to  walk  a  distance 
of  a  mile  and  a  half  to  his  home.  This  was  on  Wednesday. 
He  tied  the  dog  up,  and  went  to  his  work  on  Thursday  as 
usual ;  and  on  the  Sunday  following,  thinking  that  the  dog 
was  accustomed  to  the  place,  he  set  it  at  liberty.  He  soon 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  211 

lost  sight  of  it,  and  on  the  Wednesday  following  he  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  his  mother,  stating  that  the  dog  had 
returned  to  her.  Now  you  will  see  that  the  dog  went  first 
by  road,  then  by  market-boat,  then  through  streets,  then  by 
rail,  then  by  steamer,  then  through  streets  again,  then  by 
rail  again,  then  through  streets  again,  it  being  dark  at  the 
time."  Whether  the  animal  really  did  follow  the  back- 
track with  all  this  exactness  or  not,  one  thing  is  certain, 
he  had  sagacity  enough  to  find  his  wray,  and  (as  is  note- 
worthy in  all  these  incidents)  did  so  with  astonishing  speed. 
The  second  instance  is  still  more  striking,  and  illustrates 
very  forcibly  the  strong  love  of  home  in  the  dog,  which  is 
the  motive  in  all  these  extraordinary  and  difficult  journeys. 
"A  gentleman  in  Calcutta  wrote  to  a  friend  living  near 
In verkei thing,  on  the  shores  of  the  Frith  of  Forth,  request- 
ing him  to  send  a  good  Scotch  collie  dog.  This  was  done 
in  due  course,  and  the  arrival  of  the  dog  was  duly  acknowl- 
edged. But  the  next  mail  brought  accounts  of  the  dog 
having  disappeared,  and  that  nothing  could  be  seen  or 
heard  of  him.  Imagine  the  astonishment  of  the  gentle- 
man in  In verkei thing  when,  a  few  weeks  later,  friend 
Collie  bounced  into  his  house,  wagging  his  tail,  barking 
furiously,  and  exhibiting,  as  only  a  dog  can,  his  great  joy 
at  finding  his  master."  Inquiry  showed  that  the  dog  had 


212  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

come  aboard  a  Dundee  collier  from  a  ship  hailing  from 
Calcutta. 

Comparing  all  these  examples  and  many  others — for  hun- 
dreds, almost,  of  similar  cases  with  various  animals  might 
be  cited — certain  general  facts  appear. 

First,  incidentally,  brutes  equally  with  men  become  home- 
sick. Those  that  stay  away,  as  well  as  those  that  return  to 
their  former  homes,  show  this  very  plainly,  and  often  piti- 
ably. This  feeling  is  the  motive  which  leads  them  to  un- 
dergo perils  and  hardships  that  no  other  emotion  would 
prompt  them  to  undertake  or  enable  them  to  endure.  But 
it  is  the  most  thoroughly  domesticated  and  most  intelli- 
gent breeds  of  animals  that  this  homesickness  attacks  the 
most  severely;  while,  correlatively,  the  "most  difficult  feats 
of  finding  their  way  home  are  manifested  by  the  same  class. 
It  is  the  finely-bred  horses,  the  carefully-reared  pigeons,  the 
highly-educated  pointers,  fox-hounds,  and  collies  that  return 
from  the  longest  distances  and  over  the  greatest  obstacles. 

This  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  homing  ability  is 
largely  the  result  of  education ;  whatever  foundation  there 
may  have  been  in  the  wild  brute,  it  has  been  fostered  un- 
der civilizing  influences,  until  it  has  developed  to  an  aston- 
ishing degree.  I  would  like  to  ask  any  one  who  believes 
that  £his  ability  is  wholly  a  matter  of  intuition — an  innate 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  213 

faculty — why  such  an  instinct  should  have  been  planted  in 
the  breast  of  animals  like  dogs  and  horses  in  their  wild  con- 
dition ?  They  had  no  homes  to  which  they  could  become 
attached  as  they  do  now  in  their  artificial  life ;  or  when  they 
did  settle  during  the  breeding  season  in  any  one  spot,  either 
they  did  not  quit  it  at  all,  wandered  only  for  a  short  dis- 
tance, or  else  the  females  alone  remained  stationary,  while 
the  males  roved  as  widely  as  usual.  There  would  seem  to 
be  no  call,  therefore,  for  such  an  instinct  in  the  wild  animal. 
That  they  may  always  have  had,  and  do  now  possess,  a  very 
acute  sense  of  direction,  enabling  them  to  keep  the  points 
of  the  compass  straight  in  their  minds  far  better  than  we 
can,  I  am  willing  to  admit ;  but  I  doubt  whether  the  evi- 
dence proves  a  nearer  approach  to  a  homing  " instinct" 
than  this.  On  the  contrary,  I  believe,  as  I  have  already 
hinted,  that  beyond  this  the  performances  of  animals  in  the 
line  of  our  inquiry  are  the  result  of  accurate  observation 
and  very  retentive  memory.  That  all  these  animals  now 
and  then  do  miss  their  bearings,  get  "  turned  around  "  and 
wholly  lost,  is  true,  and  is  a  fact  to  be  remembered  in  this 
discussion. 

In  the  case  of  the  birds,  observation  by  sight  is  sufficient. 
They  rise  to  a  height  whence  they  can  detect  a  landmark, 
and  flying  thither,  catch  sight  of  another.  The  experience 


214  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

of  pigeon-trainers  shows  this  satisfactorily,  and  that  of  the 
falconers  supports  it.  The  far-reaching  eyesight  of  birds 
is  well  known.  Kill  a  goat  on  the  Andes,  and  in  half  an 
hour  flocks  of  condors  will  be  disputing  over  the  remains, 
though  when  the  shot  was  fired  not  a  single  sable  win^  blot- 
ted the  vast  blue  arch.  The  same  is  true  of  the  vultures 
of  the  Himalayas  and  elsewhere.  Gulls  drop  unerringly 
upon  a  morsel  of  food  in  the  surf,  and  hawks  pounce  from 
enormous  heights  upon  insignificant  mice  crouching  in  fan- 
cied security  among  the  meadow  stubble,  while  an  Arctic 
owl  will  perceive  a  hare  upon  the  snow  (scarcely  more 
white  than  himself)  three  times  as  far  as  the  keenest-eyed 
Chippewa  who  ever  trapped  along  Hudson's  Bay.  The 
eyesight,  then,  of  pigeons  and  falcons  is  amply  powerful  to 
show  them  the  way  in  a  country  they  have  seen  before, 
even  though  the  points  they  are  acquainted  with  be  a  hun- 
dred miles  apart. 

In  the  cases  of  horses,  dogs,  and  cats  the  explanation 
may  be  more  difficult,  and  not  always  possible  to  arrive 
at.  Horses  and  mules  are  extremely  observant  animals, 
and  quick  to  remember  places ;  everybody  who  has  ever 
had  anything  to  do  with  them  must  know  this.  Their 
recollection  is  astonishing.  The  Eev.  J.  G.  Wood  tells  of  a 
horse  which  knew  its  old  master  after  sixteen  years,  though 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  215 

he  had  grown  from  a  boy  to  a  man,  and  was,  of  course, 
much  changed  in  both  voice  and  appearance.  It  is  prob- 
able that  where  horses  come  back,  they  do  so  mainly  by 
sight  and  memory. 

As  for  dogs,  they  not  only  can  see  well,  but  they  have 
the  additional  help  of  their  intelligent  noses.  The  profi- 
ciency to  which  some  breeds  of  dogs  have  brought  their 
smelling  powers — the  precision  with  which  they  will  an- 
alyze.and  detect  different  scents  —  is  surprising.  I  have 
lately  seen  trustworthy  accounts  of  two  hunting-dogs,  one 
of  which  pointed  a  partridge  on  the  farther  side  of  a  stone 
wall,  much  to  the  surprise  of  his  master,  who  thought  his 
dog  was  an  idiot ;  and  the  other  similarly  indicated  a  bird 
sitting  in  the  midst  of  a  decaying  carcass,  the  effluvium  of 
which  was  disgustingly  strong,  yet  not  sufficiently  so  to  dis- 
guise the  scent  of  the  bird  to  the  dog's  delicate  nostrils. 
Fox -hounds  will  trace  for  miles,  at  full  speed  and  with 
heads  high,  the  step  of  a  Mercury-footed  fox,  simply  by 
the  faint  odor  with  which  his  lightly  touching  pad  has 
tainted  the  fallen  leaves. 

There  are  few  cases  where  a  dog  is  taken  from  one  home 
to  another,  when  he  could  not  see  most  of  the  time  where 
he  was  going*  In  that  complicated  journey  of  the  Holy- 
well  workman's  pet  from  northern  Wales  to  Manchester, 


216  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

the  little  fellow  had  his  eyes  open  the  whole  distance,  we 
may  be  sure,  and  if  he  could  speak  he  would  no  doubt  tell 
us  that  he  remembered  his  previous  journey  pretty  well. 
But  many  times,  especially  where  transported  by  rail,  it  is 
unquestionable  that  dogs  rely  upon  their  noses  to  get  them 
back.  Finding  that  they  are  being  kidnapped,  carried  off 
from  home  and  friends  in  this  confined,  alarming  fashion, 
unable  to  see  out  of  the  tight  box  or  the  close  car,  they  do 
just  what  you  or  I  would  under  similar  circumstances— --exert 
every  possible  means  left  them  of  discovering  whither  they 
are  going,  and  take  as  many  notes  as  possible  of  the  route, 
intending  to  escape  at  the  very  first  opportunity.  One 
means  of  investigation  remaining  is  the  scent,  and  this 
they  would  use  to  great  advantage,  examining  the  differ- 
ent smells  as  their  journey  progressed,  and  stowing  them 
away  in  their  memory  to  be  followed  back  in  inverse  order 
when  they  have  a  chance  to  return.  Granting  to  these  ani- 
mals the  discriminating  sense  of  smell  which  experience 
shows  to  be  possessed  by  them,  I  do  not  see  any  reason  why 
they  should  not  be  able  to  remember  a  journey  by  its  suc- 
cession of  odors  just  as  well  as  they  would  by  its  successive 
landmarks  to  the  eye.  Even  we,  with  our  comparatively 
useless  noses,  can  smell  the  sea  from  afar;  can  scent  the 
sweetness  of  the  green  fields  as  well  as  the  smokiness  of 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  217 

black  towns ;  and  can  distinguish  these  general  and  contin- 
uous odors  from  special  or  concentrated  odors,  which  lat- 
ter would  change  direction  as  the  smeller  changed  position. 
How  far  this  sense  has  really  been  developed  in  the  human 
subject,  perhaps  few  know ;  but  in  the  history  of  Julia 
Brace,  the  deaf  and  blind  mute  of  Boston,  for  whom  the 
late  Doctor  Howe  accomplished  so  much,  occurs  a  striking 
example.  In  her  blindness  and  stillness,  Julia's  main  oc- 
cupation was  the  exercise  of  her  remaining  senses  of  touch, 
taste,  and  smell.  It  was  upon  the  last,  we  are  told,  that  she 
seemed  most  to  rely  to  obtain  a  knowledge  of  what  was  go- 
ing on  around  her,  and  she  came  finally  to  perceive  odors 
utterly  insensible  to  other  persons.  When  she  met  a  per- 
son whom  she  had  met  before,  she  instantly  recognized  him 
by  the  odor  of  his  hand  or  glove.  If  it  was  a  stranger, 
she  smelled  his  hand,  and  the  impression  remained  so 
strong  that  she  could  recognize  him  long  after  by  again 
smelling  his  hand,  or  even  his  glove,  if  he  had  just  taken 
it  off ;  and  if,  of  half  a  dozen  strangers,  each  one  should 
throw  his  glove  into  a  hat,  she  would  take  one,  smell  it, 
then  smell  the  hand  of  each  person,  and  unerringly  assign 
each  glove  to  its  owner.  She  would  pick  out  the.  gloves 
of  a  brother  and  sister  by  the  similarity  of  odor,  but  could 
not  distinguish  between  them.  Similar  cases  might  be  pro- 


218  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

duced,  though  hardly  one  of  superior  education  in  this  re- 
spect; and  in  the  light  of  it,  it  is  not  difficult  to  suppose 
that  a  sharp  dog  should  be  able  to  follow  back  a  train  of 
odors  that  he  had  experienced  shortly  before. 

But  there  is  another  way  by  which  anxious  animals  may 
learn  their  route  both  going  and  coming,  and  that  is  by 
listening  and  inquiring.  It  is  remarkable  how  much  of 
what  is  said  by  their  masters  all  dogs  understand.  The 
books  and  periodicals  of  natural  history  and  sport  abound 
with  illustrations  of  this,  and  one  lately  occurred  within  my 
own  experience.  A  very  good-natured  and  amusing,  but 
utterly  unthoroughbred,  little  dog  was  a  member  of  a  fam- 
ily which  I  was  visiting.  The  dog  and  I  became  very  good 
friends  at  once,  and  remained  so  until  the  second  day,  when 
I  casually  began  to  joke  his  master  upon  owning  such  a 
miserable  cur.  At  once  the  little  dog  pricked  up  his  ears, 
and,  noticing  this,  I  continued  my  disparagements  in  a 
quiet,  off-hand  tone,  his  master  meanwhile  defending  and 
condoling  with  him,  until  at  last  the  dog  could  stand  it  no 
longer,  but,  without  any  provocation  beyond  my  language, 
which  was  not  addressed  to  him  at  all,  sprung  up  and  softly 
bit  at  my  heel,  as  though  to  give  me  warning  of  what 
might  happen  if  the  joke  went  any  further ;  and  after  that 
he  utterly  broke  off  our  friendship. 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  219 

I  mention  this  incident  to  call  attention  to  the  alertness 
of  our  household  pets  in  hearing  and  comprehending  what 
is  being  said.  Could  not  a  dog  on  a  railway  remember  the 
names  of  the  towns  through  which  he  passed  as  they  were 
called  out  by  the  attendants  and  spoken  by  travellers,  and 
so  be  able  to  judge  something  of  his  way  in  return  ?  The 
Kev.  Mr.  Wood  suggested  that  the  collie  which  returned 
from  India  was  enabled  to  find  the  right  vessel  at  Calcutta 
by  hearing  the  well-known  language  and  accent  of  the 
Scotch  sailors;  and  again  picked  out  from  among  many 
others  the  right  collier  in  which  to  finish  the  journey,  part- 
ly by  remembrance  of  the  rig,  but  also  by  recognizing  the 
still  more  familiar  and  home -like  dialect  of  the  Dundee 
men.  In  a  country  where  dialects  are  so  marked  as  in 
Great  Britain,  this  sort  of  observation  would  no  doubt  be 
of  great  help  to  an  intelligent  animal.  Take  the  case  of 
the  Holywell  workman's  dog.  It  is  quite  possible  that  he 
discovered  the  right  route  from  Liverpool,  whither  it  would 
not  be  so  difficult  to  make  his  way  from  Manchester,  by 
following  some  rough-tongued  Welshman  until  he  found 
himself  among  his  own  hills  again. 

But  there  is  still  more  to  be  said  about  this  part  of  a 
homesick  animal's  resources  and  ingenuity.  I  am  firm  in 
my  belief  that  animals  have  a  language  of  signs  and  utter- 


220  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ances  by  which  they  communicate  with  each  other,  and 
that  their  vocabulary,  so  to  speak,  is  much  larger  than  it 
has  generally  been  considered  to  be.  Dupont  de  Ne- 
mours declared  that  he  understood  fourteen  words  of  the 
cat  tongue.  I  am  perfectly  convinced  that  those  two 
wicked  little  mules  of  ours,  which  ran  away  so  disgrace- 
fully from  our  camp  in  Wyoming,  had  planned  the  whole 
thing  out  beforehand,  and  thus  very  likely  had  made  up 
their  minds  as  to  the  road.  They  had  been  bitter  enemies, 
biting  and  kicking  each  other,  contesting  for  coveted  places 
in  the  line,  and  quarrelling  the  whole  trip.  But  the  even- 
ing before  they  ran  away  they  were  observed  to  be  very  am- 
icable. It  attracted  our  notice,  and  the  last  that  was  seen 
of  them  in  the  morning,  just  before  they  bolted,  they  stood 
apart  from  the  rest  with  their  heads  together  and  their 
ears  erect,  waiting  the  right  moment  to  dart  away  togeth- 
er. Tell  a  mountain  mule-driver  that  the  little  beasts  do 
not  talk  among  themselves  (chiefly  in  planning  cunning 
mischief),  and  he  will  laugh  in  j7our  face. 

Cats,  we  know,  consult  a  great  deal  together,  and  two 
street  dogs  often  become  great  cronies.  "Why  should  not 
these  dogs  and  cats  be  able  to  tell  stray  companions  some- 
thing which  should  help  them  on  their  way  ?  I  believe 
they  do — just  how,  I  don't  pretend  to  say. 


HOW  ANIMALS  GET  HOME.  221 

It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  that  the  examples  cited  above, 
and  a  host  of  others  like  them,  show  that  all  domestic  ani- 
mals have  a  very  strong  love  of  places  and  persons.  In 
many  cases  this  homesickness  is  so  strong  as  to  lead  them 
to  desert  a  new  abode,  when  transferred  to  it,  and  attempt 
to  return  to  their  former  home ;  but  they  rarely  or  never 
do  so  without  having  a  definite  idea  in  their  minds  as  to 
the  route,  although  it  is  often  very  long  and  circuitous,  and 
hence  they  almost  invariably  succeed ;  otherwise,  they  do 
not  try.  It  is  not  every  animal,  by  a  long  list,  that  deserts 
a  new  home  the  moment  the  chain  is  loosed ;  only  one,  now 
and  then.  In  regard  to  the  method  used  by  them  to  find 
their  way,  it  appears  that  they  have  no  special  instinct  to 
guide  them,  but  depend  upon  their  memory  of  the  route, 
the  knowledge  of  which  was  acquired  by  an  attentive  study 
through  the  senses  of  sight,  smell,  and  hearing,  possibly  by 
communication  with  other  animals.  The  phenomenon,  as 
a  whole,  affords  another  very  striking  example  of  animal 
intelligence. 


X. 

A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE. 

CECILIUS  CALVERT,  second  Baron  of  Baltimore,  has  a  hold 
upon  the  recollections  of  mankind  far  surpassing  that  se- 
cured by  any  monument  in  the  noble  city  which  he  found- 
ed, in  the  fact  that  the  most  charming  bird  that  makes  its 
summer  home  in  the  parks  of  that  city  bears  his  name. 
That  bird  is  the  Baltimore  oriole — Icterus  Baltimore  of  Lin- 
iiseus.  Its  plumage  is  patterned  in  orange  and  black,  the 
baronial  colors  of  the  noble  lord's  livery;  and  Linnaeus  only 
paid  an  appropriate  compliment  to  the  source  to  which  he 
owed  his  specimen  of  the  new  species,  when,  in  1766,  he 
recognized  the  coincidence  in  the  name. 

Then  as  now  the  orioles  were  among  the  most  beautiful 
and  conspicuous  of  woodland  birds.  From  their  winter  re- 
treat under  the  tropics  they  return  northward  as  the  warm 
weather  advances,  arriving  in  Maryland  during  the  latter 
part  of  April,  and  reaching  central  New  England  by  the 
middle  of  May.  In  these  migrations,  performed  mostly  by 


A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE. 

day,  they  fly  continuously  and  in  a  straight  line 
high  overhead.      About  sunset  they  halt,  and 
uttering  low  notes,  dive  into  the  thickets  to 
feed,  and  afterward  to  rest.     They  go  singly, 
or  two  or  three  together.     The  males 


223 


come  in  advance,  and  instant- 
ly announce  their  presence  by  a 
loud  and  joyous  song,  continual- 
ly emulating  one  another  dur- 
ing the  week  or  more  that  elapses 
before  the*  arrival  of  the  females.  But  this 
emulation  does  not  end  with  vying  in  song ; 
they  have  many  pitched  battles,  chasing  each  other 
from  tree  to  tree  and  through  the  branches  with  angry 
notes.  The  coming  of  the  females  offers  some  diversion 
to  these  pugnacious  cavaliers,  or  at  least  furnishes  a  new 
casus  belli  ;  for,  while  they  devote  themselves  with  great 
ardor  to  wooing  and  winning  their  coy  mistresses,  their 
jealousy  is  easily  aroused,  and  their  fighting  is  often  re- 


224:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

surned.  Even  the  lady-loves  sometimes  forget  themselves  so 
far  as  to  savagely  attack  their  fancied  rivals,  o-r  drive  out  of 
sight  the  chosen  mate  of  some  male  bird  whom  they  want 
for  themselves.  This  is  not  all  fancy,  but  lamentable  fact. 
Mademoiselle  Oriole  is  not  so  showy  as  her  gay  beau. 
Persuade  the  pair  to  keep  quiet  a  moment,  and  compare 
them.  They  are  in  size  between  a  bluebird  and  a  robin, 
but  rather  more  slender  than  either.  The  plumage  of  the 
male  is  of  a  rich  but  varying  orange  upon  all  the  lower 
parts,  underneath  the  wings,  upon  the  lower  part  of  the 
back,  and  the  outer  edges  of  the  tail;  the  throat,  head, 
neck,  the  part  between  the  shoulders,  wing  quills,  and  mid- 
dle tail  feathers  are  velvety  black ;  the  bill  and  feet  are 
bluish;  there  is  a  white  ring  around  the  eye,  and  the  lesser 
wing  quills  are  edged  with  white.  In  the  female  the  pat- 
tern of  color  is  the  same,  but  the  tints  are  duller.  The  jet 
of  the  male's  head  and  neck  is  rusty  in  his  mate,  and  each 
feather  is  margined  with  olive.  The  orange  part  of  the 
plumage  is  more  like  yellow  in  the  female,  and  wing  and 
tail  quills  are  spotted  and  dirty.  Three  years  are  required 
for  the  orioles  to  receive  their  complete  plumage,  the  grad- 
ual change  of  which  is  beautifully  represented  in  one  of 
Audubon's  gigantic  plates.  "  Sometimes  the  whole  tail  of 
a  [young]  male  individual  in  spring  is  yellow,  sometimes 


A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE.  225 

only  the  two  middle  feathers  are  black,  and  frequently  the 
black  on  the  back  is  skirted  with  orange,  and  the  tail  tip- 
ped with  the  same  color."  Much  confusion  arose  among 
the  earlier  naturalists  from  this  circumstance,  though  not 
quite  so  much  as  ensued  upon  the  discovery  of  the  cousin 
of  this  species — the  orchard  oriole — which  bears  the  spe- 
cific name  spurius  to  this  day  as  a  memory  of  the  time 
when  ornithologists  called  it  a  "  bastard." 

The  singing  of  the  males  is  at  its  height  now  that  the 
females  have  come,  and  they  are  to  be  heard,  not  only  from 
field  and  grove  and  country  way-side,  but  in  the  streets  of 
villages,  and  even  in  the  parks  of  cities,  where  they  are  rec- 
ognized by  every  school-boy,  wTho  calls  them  fire-birds,  gold- 
en-robins, hang-nests,  and  Baltimore  birds.  The  lindened 
avenues  of  Philadelphia,  the  elm- embowered  precincts  of 
New  Haven,  the  sacred  trees  of  Boston  Common,  the  clas- 
sic shades  of  Harvard  Square,  and  the  malls  of  Central 
Park  all  echo  to  their  spring-time  music. 

The  song  of  the  oriole  is  indescribable,  as  to  me  are  the 
tunes  of  most  of  the  songsters.  Nuttall's  ingenious  sylla- 
bles are  totally  useless  in  expressing  the  pure  and  versatile 
fluting  which  floats  down  from  the  elm  top.  Wilson  catch- 
es its  spirit  when  he  says  that  "  there  is  in  it  a  certain  wild 
plaintiveness  and  naivete  extremely  interesting,"  and  that 

15 


226  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

it  is  uttered  "with  the  pleasing  tranquillity  of  a  careless 
ploughboy  whistling  for  his  own  amusement."  It  is  a  joy- 
ous, contented  song,  standing  out  from  the  chorus  that 
greets  our  half-awakened  ears  at  daylight  as.  brightly  as  its 
author  shines  against  the  dewy  foliage.  T.  W.  Higginson 
exclaims,  "  Yonder  oriole  fills  with  light  and  melody  the 
thousand  branches  of  a  neighborhood."  It  is  a  song  vary- 
ing with  the  tune  and  circumstances,  and,  as  among  all 
birds,  some  orioles  are  better  performers  than  others.  Dr. 
Brewer  thought  that  when  they  first  arrived,  and  were 
awaiting  the  females,  the  voices  of  the  males  were  loud 
and  somewhat  shrill,  as  though  in  lamentation,  and  that 
this  song  changed  into  a  "richer,  lower,  and  more  pleasing 
refrain"  wrhen  they  were  joined  by  their  partners.  The 
quality  of  their  music  is  certainly  different  in  different 
parts  of  the  country,  seeming,  for  example,  to  be  more  sub- 
dued toward  the  northern  limit  of  their  range. 

A  writer  in  an  old  number  of  Putnam's  Magazine  de- 
scribes two  orioles  with  which  he  had  been  acquainted  for 
several  summers.  These  birds  had  taken  up  their  resi- 
dences within  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  each  other,  one 
in  a  public  park,  and  the  other  in  an  orchard.  "And  often," 
says  the  narrator,  "  have  I  heard  the  chief  musician  of  the 
orchard,  on  the  topmost  bough  of  an  ancient  apple-tree,  sing, 


to  which  the  chorister  of  the  park,  from  the  summit  of  a 
maple,  would  respond,  in  the  same  key, 


and,  for  the  life  of  me,  I  never  was  able  to  tell  whether 
their  songs  were  those  of  rivalry  or  of  greeting  and  friend- 
ly intercourse.  And  now  if  you  will  strike  these  notes  on 
the  piano,  or,  which  is  better,  breathe  them  from  the  flute, 
you  will  know  the  song  of  the  oriole,  or  rather  obtain  an 
idea  of  its  general  characteristics,  for  no  two  that  I  have 
ever  heard  sung  the  same  melody." 

The  female  also  has  a  pretty  song,  which  mingles  with 
the  brilliant  tenor  of  the  male  during  all  the  season  of  love- 
making  ;  but  as  May  merges  into  June,  and  the  business  of 
the  summer  begins,  both  cease  their  exalted  strains,  and  only 
the  mellow,  ringing  whistle  is  heard ;  then,  as  family  cares 
increase,  they  lay  aside  even  this,  and,  except  at  dawn,  are 
rarely  heard  at  all. 

But,  after  all,  the  chief  interest  about  our  oriole  is  its 
wonderful  home,  which  hangs  upon  the  outmost  branches 


228  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

of  the  elms  along  the  street  or  in  the  grove,  and  is  com- 
pleted by  June  10.  The  nest  is  never  found  in  the  deep 
woods.  Its  maker  is  a  bird  of  the  sunlight,  and  is  sociable 
with  man.  The  haunts  of  the  orioles  are  those  grand  trees 
which  the  farmer  leaves  here  and  there  in  his  field  as  shade 
for  his  cattle,  to  lean  over  the  brier-tangled  fence  of  the 
lane,  or  droop  toward  the  dancing  waters  of  some  rural  riv- 
er. "  There  is,"  says  Thomas  Nuttall,  "  nothing  more  re- 
markable in  the  whole  instinct  of  our  golden-robin  than 
the  ingenuity  displayed  in  the  fabrication  of  its  nest,  which 
is,  in  fact,  a  pendulous,  cylindric  pouch  of  five  to  seven 
inches  in  depth,  usually  suspended  from  near  the  extremi- 
ties of  the  high  drooping  branches  of  trees  (such  as  the 
elm,  the  pear,  or  apple  tree,  wild -cherry,  weeping-willow, 
tulip-tree,  or  button-wood)." 

These  words  might  in  a  general  way  apply  to  all  the 
Icteri,  most  of  which  inhabit  North  or  South  America,  have 
brilliant  plumages,  and  build  nests  of  matchless  workman- 
ship, woven  and  entwined  in  such  a  way  as  would  defy  the 
skill  of  the  most  expert  seamstress,  and  unite  dryness,  safe- 
ty, and  warmth.  They  are  mostly  pendulous  from  the  ends 
of  branches,  and  form  thus  a  security  from  snakes  and  oth- 
er robbers,  which  could  easily  reach  them  if  placed  on  a 
more  solid  foundation.  They  are  formed  of  the  different 


A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE.  229 

grasses,  dry  roots,  lichens,  long  and  slender  mosses,  and 
other  advantageous  materials  often  supplied  by  man's  art. 
Among  different  species  the  structures  vary  in  shape  from 
resembling  a  compact  ball  to  nearly  every  bottle- shaped 
gradation  of  form,  until  they  exceed  three  or  four  feet  in 
length.  Many  species  being  gregarious,  they  breed  numer- 
ously in  the  same  vicinity  or  on  the  same  tree,  resembling 
in  this  and  other  respects  the  weaver- birds,  to  which  they 
are  closely  allied.  But  for  us  our  Baltimore's  nest  possess- 
es the  most  attractions ;  arid  as  I  shall  have  much  to  say 
concerning  this  tine  example  of  a  bird's  architecture,  I  can- 
not begin  better  than  by  quoting  Nuttall's  description  of  it. 
It  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  say  anything  different, 
and  as  well : 

"  It  is  begun  by  firmly  fastening  natural  strings  of  the 
flax  of  the  silk- weed,  or  swamp  hollyhock,  or  stout  artificial 
threads,  around  two  or  more  forked  twigs,  corresponding  to 
the  intended  width  and  depth  of  the  nest.  With  the  same 
materials,  willow  down,  or  any  accidental  ra veilings,  strings, 
thread,  sewing-silk,  tow,  or  wool  that  may  be  lying  near  the 
neighboring  houses  or  around  grafts  of  trees,  they  inter- 
weave and  fabricate  a  sort  of  coarse  cloth  into  the  form 
intended,  toward  the  bottom  of  which  they  place  the  real 
nest,  made  chiefly  of  lint,  wiry  grass,  horse  and  cow  hair : 


230  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

sometimes,  in  defect  of  hair,  lining  the  interior  with  a  mixt- 
ure of  slender  strips  of  smooth  vine  bark,  and  rarely  with 
a  few  feathers;  the  whole  being  of  a  considerable  thick- 
ness and  more  or  less  attached  to  the  external  pouch.  Over 
the  top  the  leaves,  as  they  grow  out,  form  a  verdant  and 
agreeable  canopy,  defending  the  young  from  the  sun  and 
rain.  There  is  sometimes  a  considerable  difference  in  the 
manufacture  of  these  nests,  as  well  as  in  the  materials 
which  enter  into  their  composition.  Both  sexes  seem  to 
be  equally  adepts  at  this  sort  of  labor ;  and  I  have  seen  the 
female  alone  perform  the  whole  without  any  assistance, 
and  the  male  also  complete  this  laborious  task  nearly  with- 
out the  aid  of  his  consort,  who,  however,  in  general,  is  the 
principal  worker." 

Many  persons  believe  that  there  is  a  constant  tendency 
in  birds  to  vary  their  architecture  to  suit  their  surround- 
ings, in  accordance  with  climate,  greater  or  less  readiness  of 
certain  materials,  and  security.  The  Baltimore  oriole  af- 
fords a  good  illustration  of  this  tendency.  Like  the  swal- 
lows, robin,  bluebird,  pewit,  and  others,  the  oriole  has  aban- 
doned the  wilds  for  the  proximity  to  man's  settlements,  do- 
ing it  chiefly  for  two  reasons — the  greater  abundance  of 
insect  food,  and  protection  from  hawks,  owls,  and  crows, 
which  are  fewer  in  number  and  less  bold  in  the  clearings. 


A   MIDSUMMER  PRINCE.  231 

r 

In  the  swamps  of  the  Gulf  States,  the  Baltimore,  find- 
ing no  necessity  for  great  warmth  or  shelter  from  chilling 
winds,  fabricates  an  airy  nest  of  Spanish  moss  (Tillandsia 
usneoides).  Audubon  described  and  figured  such  a  one, 
but  the  exact  truth  of  Audubon's  description  was  rather 
doubted  until  the  Boston  Society  of  Natural  History  re- 
ceived other  similar  nests  from  Florida.  In  these  cases  the 
bird  chose  material  perfectly  suited  to  the  temperature,  in 
preference  to  the  flax  and  felt  which  it  would  have  used  in 
the  North.  This  is  a  modification  due  to  difference  of  lat- 
itude and  accompanying  difference  of  climate ;  but  I  vent- 
ure to  say  that  the  Baltimores'  nests,  in  general,  built  during 
an  unusually  hot  season  in  any  latitude  will  be  much  light- 
er than  those  built  during  a  cool  or  backward  year. 

We  may  suppose  that  the  oriole,  having  learned  that  the 
place  for  its  home  safest  from  all  marauding  animals  and 
reptiles  was  out  upon  the  tips  of  the  swaying  twigs,  which 
would  not  bear  the  marauder's  weight,  would  also  have 
learned  the  shape  best  adapted  to  that  situation ;  and  that 
if  it  knew  enough  to  choose  the  lesser  danger  from  man  in 
order  to  escape  a  greater  one  from  hawks  when  it  came  out 
of  the  deep  woods,  it  would  also  have  reason  enough  to 
alter  its  style  of  building  in  such  a  way  as  should  best  hide 
the  sitting  bird  from  the  prying  eyes  of  its  winged  enemies, 


232  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

and  at  the  same  time  afford  dryness  and  warmth  to  the  in- 
terior. Both  of  these  were  secured  in  the  thick  branches 
of  the  primeval  forest  by  the  leaves  overhead  and  around. 
It  is  hence  found  that  in  the  same  climate  the  more  ex- 
posed a  nest  is  the  denser  its  composition,  the  deeper  the 
pouch,  and  the  smaller  its  mouth.  Pennant  and  others  of 
the  earlier  writers  on  American  birds  described  the  orioles' 
nests  as  having  only  a  hole  near  the  top  for"  entrance  and 
exit,  like  those  of  some  of  the  South  American  species. 
Wilson,  who  was  the  first  real  critic  of  our  ornithology,  said 
this  was  certainly  an  error,  adding,  "  I  have  never  met  with 
anything  of  the  kind."  Both  authors  seem  to  have  made  too 
sweeping  assertions,  and,  as  usual,  there  is  a  golden  mean  of 
fact.  Our  hang-nest  has  enough  discernment  to  select  the 
safest  and  best  site  for  a  nest  ever  chosen  by  a  tree-build- 
ing bird.  He  has  sufficient  discretion  to  inhabit  trees  where 
his  young  will  be  least  exposed  to  birds  of  prey.  He  has 
sense  and  skill  enough  to  build  a  warm  or  cool  house  to 
suit  the  climate — a  deep  and  tight  one  where  the  sun  shines 
brightly,  and  sharp  eyes  might  see  the  orange  coat  of 
himself  or  his  mate  within,  and  a  loose  and  (in  labor)  less 
expensive  one  where  deep  shadows  hide  it.  Surely,  then, 
this  consummate  workman  has  ingenuity  enough  to  put  a 
roof  over  his  dwelling  to  shed  the  rain  and  the  hawk's 


A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE.  233 

r 

glances,  leaving  only  a  little  door  in  the  side.  Both  of 
these  things  the  hang- nest  actually  does.  I  myself  have 
seen  a  nest  of  his  making,  over  the  open  top  of  which  a 
broad  leaf  had  been  bent  down  and  tied  by  glutinous 
threads  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  a  good  portico.  Mr. 
Thomas  Gentry  found  a  much  more  complete  example  at 
Germantown  (Philadelphia),  Pennsylvania,  where  the  ori- 
oles "  were  constrained  to  erect  a  permanent  roof  to  their 
dwelling  by  interwoven  strings  through  their  deprivation 
of  the  verdant  and  agreeable  canopy  which  the  leaves  would 

naturally  afford So  nicely  is  the  roof  adjusted  that 

even  the  most  critical  investigation  cannot  discern  the 
union.  The  entrance  is  a  circular  opening  situated  in  the 
superior  third  of  the  nest,  facing  southwardly."  Mr.  Gen- 
try considers  this  the  latest  improvement  upon  a  nest  which 
in  the  beginning  was  simply  a  hammock  in  the  fork  of  a 
tree,  like  a  vireo's,  but  which  has  been  made  more  and 
more  pendulous,  until  what  was  at  first  the  whole  nest  is 
now  only  the  lining  at  the  bottom  of  a  deep  enclosing  bag. 
With  the  idea  of  testing  Wallace's  theory  that  birds  of 
bright  colors,  easily  detected  by  birds  of  prey,  are  always 
found  to  occupy  concealing  nests,  Dr.  C.  C.  Abbott,  of 
Trenton,  New  Jersey,  made  extensive  notes  upon  the  nests 
of  our  subject.  In  every  instance  those  nests  which  fully 


234:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

concealed  the  sitting  bird  were  at  a  considerable  distance 
from  any  house  in  uncultivated  parts.  In  all  such  local- 
ities sparrow-hawks  were  seen  frequently,  as  compared 
with  the  neighborhoods  selected  for  building  the  shallower 
open-topped  nests,  all  of  which  were  in  willow  or  elm  trees 
in  the  yards  of  farm-houses.  The  conclusion  drawn  was 
that  the  orioles  knew  where  danger  from  hawks  was  to  be 
apprehended,  and  constructed  accordingly — the  less  elabo- 
rate nest  in  the  farmer's  yard  answering  every  purpose  for 
incubation.  Dr.  Abbott  says,  however,  that  of  the  nests 
that  did  conceal  the  sitting  bird,  every  one  was  really  open 
at  the  top,  and  the  bird  entered  from  above.  Its  weight, 
when  in  the  nest,  appeared  to  draw  the  edges  of  the  rim 
together  sufficiently  to  shut  out  all  view  of  the  occupant. 
It  is  his  opinion,  however,  that  years  ago,  wThen  its  enemies 
were  more  numerous,  the  nest  of  this  oriole  was  perfectly 
closed  at  the  top,  and  with  a  side  opening ;  but  he  finds 
none  so  now. 

The  question  why  this  species  alone  among  our  birds  is 
supposed  to  have  learned  by  dear  experience  to  take  such 
precautions  against  its  foes  has  already  been  answered :  it 
is  because  the  Baltimore  oriole  is  almost  the  only  species 
in  which  the  female  is  not  protected  from  observation  by 
her  neutral  and  dull  colors,  and  in  which  the  brightly  phi- 


A   MIDSUMMER  PRINCE.  235 

r 

maged  male  also  sits  upon  the  eggs.  Mother  Necessity  has 
prompted  the  marvellous  invention. 

Nuttall  thought  both  59x68  equally  expert  at  nest-build- 
ing, although  the  labor  principally  devolved  upon  the  fe- 
male. The  latter  clause  in  particular  Mr.  Gentry  has  con- 
firmed, and  tells  us  that  the  male  occupies  himself  only  in 
collecting  materials  for  his  mate.  They  labor  very  steadily, 
but  a  week's  work  is  necessary  for  the  completion  of  their 
home.  It  seems  strange  that  domiciles  constructed  with  so 
much  pains  should  not  be  occupied  successive  seasons,  but 
this  seems  never  to  be  the  case.  It  sometimes  happens, 
however,  that  orioles  will  pick  to  pieces  an  old  nest  to  get 
materials  for  a  new  one,  just  as  the  Indians  of  Peru  often 
construct  their  huts  of  the  cut-stone  blocks  of  the  ancient 
palaces  of  the  Incas.  These  birds  are  very  knowing  in 
gathering  stuff  for  the  framework  of  their  homes,  and  per- 
ceive the  adaptability  to  their  needs  of  the  housewife's  yarn 
and  laces,  hung  out  to  dry,  much  sooner  than  they  perceive 
the  immorality  of  stealing  them.  White  cotton  strings 
are  rarely  absent 'from  their  nests,  which  are  sometimes  al- 
most entirely  composed  of  them.  Some  curious  anecdotes 
have  been  related  of  this  economical  propensity  and  its  re- 
sults ;  Nuttall  tells  the  following : 

"A  female  (oriole),  which  I  observed  attentively,  carried 


236  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

off  to  her  nest  a  piece  of  lamp-wick  ten  or  twelve  feet  long. 
This  long  string  and  many  other  shorter  ones  were  left 
hanging  out  for  about  a  week  before  both  ends  were  wat- 
tled into  the  sides  of  the  nest.  Some  other  little  birds, 
making  use  of  similar  materials,  at  times  twitched  these 
flowing  ends,  and  generally  brought  out  the  busy  Baltimore 
from  her  occupation  in  great  anger." 

A  lady  once  told  John  Burroughs  that  one  of  these  birds 
snatched  a  skein  of  yarn  from  her  window-sill,  and  made 
off  with  it  to  its  half-finished  nest.  But  the  perverse  yarn 
caught  fast  in  the  branches,  and,  in  the  bird's  efforts  to  ex- 
tricate it,  got  hopelessly  tangled.  She  tugged  away  at  it 
all  day,  but  was  finally  obliged  to  content  herself  with  a 
few  detached  portions.  The  fluttering  strings  were  an  eye- 
sore to  her  ever  after,  and  passing  and  repassing  she  would 
give  them  a  spiteful  jerk,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  There  is  that 
confounded  yarn  that  gave  me  so  much  trouble !" 

A  gentleman  in  Pennsylvania,  observing  an  oriole  begin- 
ning to  build,  hung  out  "skeins  of  many-colored  zephyr 
yarn,  which  the  eager  artist  readily  appropriated.  He  man- 
aged it  so  that  the  bird  used  nearly  equal  quantities  of  vari- 
ous high,  bright  colors.  The  nest  was  made  unusually  deep 
and  capacious,  and  it  may  be  questioned  if  such  a  thing  of 
beauty  was  ever  before  woven  by  the  cunning  of  a  bird." 


A  MIDSUMMER  PRINC&  237 

The  nest  being  done,  the  female  begins  to  deposit  her 
eggs  on  the  successive  day,  and  continues  laying  one  each 
day  until  four  or  five  are  laid.  The  eggs  are  pointed  oval, 
0.90  by  0.60  of  an  inch  in  dimensions,  grayish- white,  with 
a  roseate  tinge  in  fresh  and  transparent  specimens,  and  va- 
riously marked  with  blotches  and  irregular  lines,  like  pen 
scratches,  of  purplish-brown.  On  the  day  following,  incu- 
bation begins,  and  the  eggs  hatch  at  the  end  of  about  fif- 
teen days,  bringing  it  to  the  middle  of  June. 

The  courage  and  devotion  of  the  parents  in  defence  of 
their  nests  are  known  to  every  ornithologist.  They  expose 
themselves  fearlessly  to  danger  rather  than  desert  their 
charge,  and  call  upon  heaven  and  earth  to  witness  their 
persecution.  I  remember  one  such  instance.  I  discovered 
a  nest  with  eggs  in  a  sycamore  on  the  banks  of  the  Yantic 
River,  in  Connecticut.  In  trying  to  examine  it  I  roused 
the  ire  of  the  owners,  who  showed  the  most  intense  anger 
and  dismay.  Enjoying  this  little  exhibition,  I  did  all  I 
could  to  terrify  the  fond  parents  without  harming  them  a$ 
all,  and  then  quietly  watched  the  result.  The  birds  flew 
close  about  the  nest,  screaming  and  uttering  a  loud  roll- 
ing  cry  like  a  policeman's  rattle,  which  very  soon  brought 
plenty  of  sympathetic  and  curious  friends.  A  cat -bird 
ventured  too  near,  and  was  pounced  upon  by  the  Baltimore 


238  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

with  a  fierceness  not  to  be  resisted.  But  when  the  cat-bird 
found  he  was  not  pursued  beyond  the  shade  of  the  tree,  he 
perched  upon  a  neighboring  post,  and  by  hissing,  strutting 
up  arid  down,  and  every  provoking  gesture  known  to  birds, 
challenged  the  oriole,  who  paid  no  attention  to  his  empty 
braggadocio.  Next  Mrs.  Oriole  did  something  distasteful 
to  her  lord,  and  received  prompt  chastisement.  A  confi- 
dent kingbird  dashed  up,  and  was  beautifully  whipped  in 
half  a  minute.  Vireos,  pewits,  warblers  were  attracted  to 
the  scene,  but  kept  at  a  safe  distance.  There  was  no  ap- 
peasing the  anxiety  of  the  parents  until  I  left,  and  probably 
they  spent  the  whole  afternoon  in  recovering  their  equa- 
nimity. 

The  study  of  the  expressions  and  dialects  of  animals  and 
birds  under  such  circumstances  is  extremely  entertaining 
and  instructive.  Though  you  should  happen  upon  a  Balti- 
more's nest  when  the  female  is  sitting,  and  the  male  is  out 
of  sight,  the  female  will  sit  quietly  until  the  very  last  mo- 
ment; and  Mr.  Kidgway  mentions  an  instance  where  the 
female  even  entered  her  nest  while  he  was  severing  it  from 
the  branch,  and  remained  there  until  carried  into  the  house. 
The  young  birds,  before  they  can  fly,  Dr.  Brewer  says,  climb 
to  the  edge  of  the  nest,  and  are  liable  in  sudden  tempests 
to  be  thrown  out.  If  uninjured  they  are  good  climbers, 


A  MIDSUMMER  PRINCE.  239 

and  by  means  of  wings,  bill,  and  claws  are  often  able  to 
reach  places  of  safety.  In  one  instance  a  fledgling  which 
had  broken  both  legs,  and  had  been  placed  in  a  basket  to 
be  fed  by  its  parents,  managed  by  wings  and  bill  to  raise 
itself  to  the  rim,  and  in  a  few  days  took  its  departure.  To 
this  dexterity  in  the  use  of  the  bill  as  a  prehensile  organ, 
the  birds  may  owe  their  skill  in  weaving. 

The  young  are  fed  upon  an  insect  diet,  and  mainly  upon 
caterpillars  which  are  disgorged  after  having  been  proper- 
ly swallowed  by  the  parents.  They  leave  the  nest  after  a 
fortnight,  but  are  attended  by  the  parent  birds  ten  days 
longer  before  being  turned  off  to  take  care  of  themselves. 
The  food  of  the  Baltimore  oriole,  old  and  young,  is  almost 
entirely  insectivorous,  succulent  young  peas  and  the  sta- 
mens of  cherry  and  plum  flowers  forming  the  only  excep- 
tions. These  small  robberies  are  but  a  slight  compensation 
for  the  invaluable  services  he  renders  the  gardener  in  the 
destruction  of  hosts  of  noxious  insects.  At  first  beetles 
and  hymenopterous  insects  form  his  diet,  and  he  seeks 
them  with  restless  agility  among  the  opening  buds.  As 
the-  season  progresses,  and  the  caterpillars  begin  to  appear, 
he  forsakes  the  tough  beetle,  and  rejoices  in  their  juicy 
bodies,  being  almost  the  only  bird  that  will  eat  the  hairy 
and  disgusting  tent-caterpillar  of  the  apple-trees. 


240  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

About  the  middle  of  September  the  Baltimore  orioles  be- 
gin to  disappear,  and  by  the  last  of  the  month  all  have  left 
the  Northern  States  for  their  winter -quarters  in  Mexico, 
Central  America,  and  the  "West  Indies. 


XI. 

BANK-SWALL  0  WS. 

THE  bird  which  is  the  subject  of  this  sketch  is  familiar 
to  all  who  walk  in  green  pastures  and  beside  still  waters ; 
for  in  such  haunts  do  the  bank -swallows  congregate  in 
merry  companies,  making  up  for  their  want  of  companion- 
ship with  man,  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the  other  hiran- 
dines,  by  a  large  sociability  among  themselves.  Conserva- 
tor of  ancient  ways,  it  is  almost  the  only  swallow  which  has 
not  attached  itself  to  humanity  as  'soon  as  it  had  opportu- 
nity, and  changed  from  a  savage  to  a  civilized  bird.  Per- 
haps it,  too,  has  tried  it  long  ago,  and  voluntarily  returned 
to  the  fields;  for  our  bank- swallow  is  a  cosmopolite,  and 
has  watched  the  rise  and  fall  of  all  the  dynasties  and  na- 
tionalities that  have  grouped  the  centuries  into  eras,  from 
Nineveh  to  San  Francisco.  Even  now  it  is  an  inhabitant 
of  all  Europe  and  eastward  to  China ;  of  a  large  part  of 
Africa,  especially  in  winter ;  and  throughout  North  Amer- 
ica, the  West  Indies,  Central  America,  and  the  northern 

16 


242  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

Andean  countries.  On  both  continents  its  wanderings  ex- 
tend to  the  extreme  north,  where,  in  Alaska,  it  is  one  of  the 
commonest  summer  visitors.  So  this  modest  little  bird, 
.smallest  of  his  kind,  is  entitled  to  our  respect  as  a  travel- 
ler at  least ;  and,  to  compare  the  habits  and  appearance  of 
the  representatives  in  different  portions  of  the  globe  of  so 
widely  distributed  a  species,  becomes  a  most  interesting 
study. 

Cotyle  ripama,  the  bank-swallow,  sand-martin,  sand-swal- 
low, river-swallow,  Fhirondelle  de  rivage,  or  back-svala,  is 
generally  diffused  over  the  northern  hemisphere,  though 
very  unequally,  avoiding  those  spots  unfavorable  to  it. 
In  this  distribution  it  seems  to  have  been  somewhat  influ- 
enced by  man,  though  owing  him  no  other  favors  than  the 
incidental  help  of  railroad -cuttings  and  sand-pits,  which 
have  increased  the  sites  suitable  for  its  nests,  and  thus  ena- 
bled the  species  to  spread  inland. 

It  is  one  of  the  earliest  birds  to  arrive  in  the  spring,  ap- 
pearing in  Old  England  during  the  last  week  in  March,  and 
in  New  England  early  in  May — many  passing  on  to  the 
shores  of  the  Arctic  Ocean,  where  Kichardson,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Mackenzie,  and  Ball,  on  the  Yukon,  found  them 
breeding  in  immense  numbers.  In  these  high  latitudes  its 
summer  is  necessarily  a  brief  one,  and  September  finds 


FUN  FOK  THE  BOYS,  BUT — 


BANK-SWALLOWS.  245 

it  back  again,  picking  up  congeners  for  company  on  the 
southward  journey. 

Where  these  and  other  swallows  spend  the  winter  was  a 
hotly-debated  question  among  ornithologists  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century ;  some  affirming  that  they  mi- 
grated with  the  sun,  while  others,  believing  it  impossible 
that  such  small  and  delicate  birds  could  endure  the  great 
fatigue  and  temperatures  incident  to  such  a  migration,  held 
that  they  regularly  hibernated  during  the  cold  weather, 
sinking  into  th'e  mud  at  the  bottom  of  ponds,  like  frogs,  or 
curling  up  in  deep,  warm  crannies,  like  bats,  and  remaining 
torpid  until  revived  by  the  warmth  of  spring.  Of  this  lat- 
ter opinion  was  White,  of  Selborne,  who  alludes  to  it  again 
and  again;  and  Sir  Thomas  Forster  wrote  a  "Monograph  of 
British  Swallows,"  apparently  with  no  other  object  than  to 
present  the  arguments  for  arid  against  the  theory  of  their 
annual  submersion  and  torpidity.  One  of  the  difficulties 
w^hich  the  submersionists  put  in  the  way  of  the  migration- 
ists  was  the  frequent  accidental  and  isolated  appearance  of 
the  swallow  before  its  usual  time — a  fact  which  has  occa- 
sioned a  proverb  in  almost  every  language.  The  French 
have,  "  Une  hirondelle  ne  fait  pas  le  printemps  ;"  the  Ger- 
mans, "Eine  Schwalbe  macht  fain-en  Sommer ;"  the  Dutch, 
"  Een  zwaluw  maak  geen  zomer ;"  the  Italians,  "  Una  rodine 


246  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

non  fa  primavera  ;"  the  Swedes,  "JEn  svala  gor  ingen  som- 
mar  /"  which  all  mean,  One  swallow  doth  not  make  a  sum- 
mer. The  story  is  well  known  of  a  thin  brass  plate  having 
been  fixed  on  a  swallow  with  this  inscription :  "  Prithee, 
swallow,  whither  goest  thou  in  winter  ?"  The  bird  return- 
ed next  spring  with  the  answer  subjoined,  "  To  Anthony, 
of  Athens.  "Why  dost  thou  inquire?" 

Out  of  this  controversy  evidence  of  their  sudden  autum- 
nal adjournment  to  Africa  accumulated  in  England.  Wil- 
son, in  this  country,  showed  that  their  advance  could  be 
traced  in  the  spring  from  New  Orleans  to  Lake  Superior 
and  back  again,  and  their  regular  migration  soon  came  to 
be  acknowledged.  Then  attention  was  turned  to  the  sea- 
son, manner,  and  limits  of  their  migrations,  and  it  was  found 
that,  taking  advantage  of  favorable  winds,  immense  flocks 
of  swallows  —  and  many  other  birds  of  passage  as  well — 
flying  very  high,  passed  each  fall  from  the  coast  of  Eng- 
land to  the  coast  of  Africa,  and  from  Continental  Europe 
across  the  Mediterranean  direct,  whence  they  spread  south- 
ward almost  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope.  No  sooner  had 
the  spring  fairly  opened  than  they  were  suddenly  back 
again,  very  much  exhausted  at  first  with  their  long-susj 
tained  effort,  but  speedily  recuperated  and  "diligent  in 
business."  Our  own  migrants,  as  I  have  mentioned,  winter 


A   NARROW   ESCAPE. 


BANK-SWALLOWS.  249 

in  Central  America  and  the  West  Indies,  or  still  farther 
south. 

Their  flight  is  rapid  but  unsteady, "  with  odd  jerks  and 
vacillations  not  unlike  the  motions  of  a  butterfly,"  as  White 
describes  it;  and  continues:  "Doubtless  the  flight  of  all 
hirundines  is  influenced  by  and  adapted  to  the  peculiar  sort 
of  insects  which  furnish  their  food.  Hence  it  would  be 
worth  inquiry  to  examine  what  particular  genus  of  insects 
affords  the  principal  food  of  each  respective  species  of  swal- 
low." They  are  constantly  on  the  wing,  skimming  low 
over  land  and  loch,  pausing  not  even  to  drink  or  bathe,  but 
simply  dropping  into  some  limpid  lake  as  they  sweep  by 
to  sip  a  taste  of  water  or  cleanse  their  dirty  coats.  It  seems 
strange,  then,  that  birds  who  sustain  the  unremitting  exer- 
tion of  a  flight  scarcely  less  than  one  hundred  miles  an  hour 
in  speed,  during  the  whole  of  a  long  summer's  day,  should 
not  be  thought  capable  of  the  transition  from  England  to 
Africa.  However,  at  that  time  it  was  not  well  understood 
what  long-continued  flight  small  birds  actually  do  make,  as, 
for  instance,  from  our  coast  to  the  Bahamas,  or  even  across 
to -Ireland,  or  from  Egypt  to  Heligoland,  one  thousand  two 
hundred  miles,  which  is  passed  over  at  a  single  flight,  by  a 
certain  tiny  warbler,  in  every  migration. 

The  bank-swallow  is  not  a  musical  bird,  a  faint,  squeak- 


250  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

ing  chirrup  being  all  its  voice  can  accomplish ;  nor  is  it  a 
handsome  bird — simply  sooty-brown  above,  white  beneath, 
with  a  brown  breast.  To  its  grace  of  motion  and  charm- 
ing home-life  we  attribute  that  in  it  which  attracts  us. 

Although  probably  the  least  numerous  of  all  the  swal- 
lows, they  do  not  seem  so,  because  of  the  great  compa- 
nies which  are  to  be  seen  together  wherever  they  are  to  be 
found  at  all;  and  because,  leading  a  more  sequestered  life, 
they  are  not  usually  brought  into  direct  comparison  with 
house-martins  and  chimney -swifts.  Eminently  social  in 
their  habits,  they  congregrate  not  only  at  the  time  of  mi- 
gration (then,  indeed,  least  of  all),  and  in  the  construction 
of  their  homes,  but  sometimes  alight  in  great  flocks  on  the 
reeds  by  the  river-side  and  on  the  beach,  where  Sir  William 
Jardine  saw  them,  "  partly  resting  and  washing,  and  partly 
feeding  on  a  small  fly,  which  was  very  abundant."  Yet 
you  will  occasionally  notice  stray  individuals  associating 
with  other  swallows. 

The  secret  of  the  local  distribution  of  the  bank-swallows 
lies  in  the  presence  or  absence  of  vertical  exposures  of  soil 
suitable  for  them  to  penetrate  for  the  burrows  at  the  inner 
end  of  wrhich  the  nest  is  placed.  Firm  sand,  with  no  ad- 
mixture of  pebbles,  is  preferred,  and  in  such  an  exposure, 
be  it  sea-shore,  river-bank,  sand-pit,  or  railway-cutting,  the 


BANK-SWALLOWS.  251 

face  will  be  fairly  honey-combed  with  burrows,  so  that  we 
can  readily  believe  that  Mr.  Dall  counted  over  seven  hun- 
dred holes  in  one  bluff  in  Alaska.  These  are  usually  very 
close  together,  and  the  wonder  is  how  the  birds  can  dis- 
tinguish their  own  doors.  If  mistakes  do  occur,  I  imagine 
they  are  all  very  polite  about  it,  for  I  know  of  no  more 
peaceable  neighbors  among  birds  than  they.  The  mode  in 
which  this  perforation  is  performed,  requiring  an  amount 
of  labor  rare  with  animals,  is  well  described  by  Mr.  Rennie 
in  his  "Architecture  of  Birds:" 

"  The  beak  is  hard  and  sharp,  and  admirably  adapted  for 
digging ;  it  is  small,  we  admit,  but  its  shortness  adds  to  its 

strength,  and  the  bird  works with  its  bill  shut.     This 

fact  our  readers  may  verify  by  observing  their  operations 
early  in  the  morning  through  an  opera-glass,  when  they  be- 
gin in  the  spring  to  form  their  excavations.  In  this  way 
we  have  seen  one  of  these  birds  cling  with  its  sharp  claws 
to  the  face  of  a  sand-bank,  and  peg  in  its  bill  as  a  miner 
would  his  pickaxe,  till  it  had  loosened  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  the  hard  sand,  and  tumbled  it  down  among  the 
rubbish  below.  In  these  preliminary  operations  it  never 
makes  use  of  its  claws  for  digging ;  indeed,  it  is  impossible 
that  it  could,  for  they  are  indispensable  in  maintaining  its 
position,  at  least  when  it  is, beginning  its  hole.  We  have 


252  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

further  remarked  that  some  of  these  martins'  holes  are 
nearly  as  circular  as  if  they  had  been  planned  out  with  a 
pair  of  compasses,  while  others  are  more  irregular  in  form  ; 
but  this  seems  to  depend  more  on  the  sand  crumbling  away 
than  upon  any  deficiency  in  its  original  workmanship.  The 
bird,  in  fact,  always  uses  its  own  body  to  determine  the 
proportions  of  the  gallery,  the  part  from  the  thigh  to  the 
head  forming  the  radius  of  the  circle.  It  does  not  trace 
this  out  as  we  should  do,  by  fixing  a  point  for  the  centre 
around  which  to  draw  the  circumference ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  perches  on  the  circumference  with  its  claws,  and  wwks 
with  its  bill  from  the  centre  outward ; the  bird  conse- 
quently assumes  all  positions  while  at  work  in  the  interior, 
hanging  from  the  roof  of  the  gallery  with  its  back  down- 
ward as  often  as  standing  on  the  floor.  We  have  more 
than  once,  indeed,  seen  a  bank -martin  wheeling  slowly 
round  in  this  manner  on  the  face  of  a  sand-bank  when  it 
was  just  breaking  ground  to  begin  its  gallery. 

"  This  manner  of  working,  however,  from  the  circumfer- 
ence to  the  centre  unavoidably  leads  to  irregularities  in  the 

direction Accordingly,  all  the  galleries  are  found  to 

be  more  or  less  tortuous  to  their  termination,  which  is  at 
the  depth  of  from  two  to  three  feet,  where  a  bed  of  loose 
hay  and  a  few  of  the  smaller  breast-feathers  of  geese,  ducks, 


BANK-SWALLOWS.  253 

or  fowls  is  spread  with  little  art  for  the  reception  of  the 
four  to  six  white  eggs.  It  may  not  be  unimportant  to  re- 
mark, also,  that  it  always  scrapes  out  with  its  feet  the  sand 
detached  by  the  bill ;  but  so  carefully  is  this  performed 
that  it  never  scratches  up  the  unmined  sand,  or  disturbs 
the  plane  of  the  floor,  which  rather  slopes  upward,  and  of 
course  the  lodgment  of  rain  is  thereby  prevented." 

Sometimes  the  nest  is  carried  to  a  far  greater  depth  than 
two  or  three  feet,  as  in  a  case  observed  by  Mr.  Fowler,  in 
Beverly,  Massachusetts,  where,  in  order  to  get  free  of  a 
stony  soil,  where  pebbles  might  be  dislodged  and  crush  the 
eggs,  the  tunnel  was  carried  in  nine  feet,  while  neighboring 
birds  in  better  soil  only  went  a  third  as  far.  In  one  place 
the  burrows  will  be  close  to  the  top  of  the  bluff;  in  another 
near  the  bottom,  according  as  fancy  dictates,  or  the  birds 
have  reason  to  fear  this  or  that  enemy.  English  writers 
agree  that  occasionally  their  bank  -  swallows  do  not  dig 
holes,  but  lay  in  the  crannies  of  old  walls,  and  in  hollows 
of  trees.  This  is  never  done,  that  I  am  aware  of,  in  the 
United  States ;  but  in  California  a  closely  allied  species,  the 
rough-winged  swallow,  "  sometimes  resorts  to  natural  clefts 
in  the  banks  or  adobe  buildings,  and  occasionally  to  knot- 
holes." On  the  great  plains,  however,  our  Cotyle  burrows 
in  the  slight  embankments  thrown  up  for  a  railway-bed,  in 


254:  FRIENDS  WORTH  KNOWING. 

lieu  of  a  better  place ;  and  at  St.  Paul  I  have  seen  them 
penetrating  solid,  but  soft,  sand-rock. 

"  How  long  does  it  take  the  bird  to  dig  his  cavern  under 
ordinary  circumstances  ?"  is  a  question  which  it  would  seem 
hard  to  answer,  considering  the  cryptic  character  of  his 
work.  Mr.  W.  H.  Dall  says  four  days  suffice  to  excavate 
the  nest.  Mr.  Morris,  a  close  observer  of  British  birds,  says, 
per  contra,  a  fortnight ;  and  that  the  bird  removes  twenty 
ounces  of  sand  a  day.  Male  and  female  alternate  in  the 
labor  of  digging,  and  in  the  duties  of  incubation. 

When  the  female  is  sitting  you  may  thrust  your  arm  in 
and  grasp  her,  and,  notwithstanding  the  noise  and  violence 
attending  the  enlargement  of  the  aperture  of  her  nest-hole, 
she  will  sit  resolutely  on,  and  allow  herself  to  be  taken  in 
the  hand  with  scarcely  a  struggle  or  sign  of  resistance — 
even  of  life,  sometimes.  The  young  are  fed  with  large  in- 
sects caught  by  the  parents,  particularly  those  sub-aquatic 
sorts  which  hover  near  the  surface  of  still  water;  and 
White  mentions  instances  where  young  swallows  were  fed 
with  dragon-flies  nearly  as  long  as  themselves.  The  young 
do  not  leave  the  nest  until  they  are  about  ready  to  take 
full  care  of  themselves.  Finally,  they  are  pushed  off  by 
the  parents  to  make  Way  for  a  second  brood,  and,  inex- 
perienced in  the  use  of  their  wings,  many  fall  a  prey  to 


BANK-SWALLOWS.  255 

crows  and  small  hawks  that  lie  in  wait  ready  to  pounce 
upon  the  first  poor  little  fellow  that  launches  upon  the  un- 
tried air.  Those  that  manage  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  the 
hawks  collect  in  small  companies  by  themselves,  and  have  a 
good  time  hunting  by  day  and  roosting  at  night  among  the 
river -reeds,  until  the  autumn  migration.  "At  this  time, 
Salerne  observes,"  says  Latham,  "  that  the  young  are  very 
fat,  and  in  flavor  scarcely  inferior  to  the  ortolan"  Some- 
times the  parents  forsake  their  progeny  in  the  nest,  and 
seem  generally  to  care  less  for  them  than  is  usually  the 
case  among  swallows. 

But  not  the  young  alone  are  exposed  to  enemies.  It 
would  seem  as  though  the  situation  of  the  nest  precluded 
invasion,  yet,  if  they  are  near  the  haunts  of  the  house-spar- 
row, they  are  sure  to  be  dispossessed  of  their  homes  by  that 
buccaneer.  Snakes,  too,  can  sometimes  reach  their  holes ; 
weasels,  like  that  one  Mr.  Hewitson  tells  us  of,  are  often 
sharp  enough  to  make  their  entree  from  above  :  school-boys 
regard  the  pink-white  eggs  a  fine  prize ;  and,  last  and  worst 
of  all,  the  bank-swallows  are  many  times  utterly  worried 
out  of  their  galleries  by  fleas  and  young  horse-flies,  which 
swarm  and  increase  in  their  nests  until  the  bird  finds  en- 
durance no  longer  a  virtue,  and  digs  a  new  latebra. 


INDEX. 


Animals,  comprehension  of,  218. 
"         lost,  returning,  199. 

B. 

BANK-SWALLOWS,  241. 
Bee,  tactics  of,  203. 
Birds  and  weather,  113. 

"     at  night,  111. 

"      enemies  of,  185,  255. 

"      far  eyesight  of,  213. 

"      flight  of,  87, 249. 

"      food  in  winter,  131. 

"      migration  of,  93, 107,  249. 

"      nests  of,  102, 230,  249. 

"      of  Spring,  36. 

"     OUR  WINTER,  106. 

"      protective  colors  of,  134,  233. 

"      superstitions  about,  196. 
Bison  (Buifalo),  domesticated,  154. 

"      extinct  races  of,  143, 162, 164. 

"      former  range  of,  158. 
Blackbird,  the  crow,  52. 

"          the  red-winged,  49. 


Bluebird,  37. 

BUFFALO,  THE,  AND  HIS  FATE,  140. 


Chickadee,  the,  122. 

Chippy,  the,  46. 

CIVILIZING  INFLUENCES  (on  birds), 

182, 230,  241. 
Civilizing  influences  on  the  bison, 

166. 
Creeper,  the  brown,  119, 135. 

D. 
Darwinism  in  the  song  -  sparrow, 

181. 
Dogs,  anecdotes  of  homing  ability 

of,  207. 

Dogs,  power  of  scent  in,  215. 
Dove,  the,  44. 

F. 

FIRST-COMERS,  36. 

Fishes,  possible  perceptions  of,  204. 

Fringillidse,  the  winter,  123, 136. 


IT 


258 


INDEX. 


G. 

Geographical  distribution  of  birds, 

91. 
Geographical  distribution  of  snails, 

25. 

Goldfinch,  the,  125. 
Grass-finch,  the,  127. 

H. 
How  ANIMALS  GET  HOME,  199. 

J. 
Julia  Brace,  sense  of  sinell  in,  217. 

K. 

Kinglets,  the,  118,  134. 


Mice,  damage  done  by,  82. 
Mouse  in  vireo's  nest,  73. 

"      jumping,  60. 

"      meadow,  63,  70,  79. 

"      white-footed,  74,  84. 
Mound-builders,  the,  163. 
Mules,  keen  intelligence  of,  205. 

N. 
Nuthatch,  the,  120. 

O. 

Oriole,  Baltimore,  220. 
ORNITHOLOGICAL  LECTURE,  AN,  85. 


P. 

Pigeons,  feats  of  homing,  199. 
Pine-finch,  the,  124, 136. 
Pine-grossbeak,  the,  124, 136. 
PRINCE,  A  MIDSUMMER,  220. 

R. 

Red-poll  linnet,  the,  126. 
Redwiug,  the,  49. 


SNAILERY,  IN  A,  9. 
Snails,  anatomy,  10,  21. 

"      as  food  and  medicine,  32. 

"      eggs  of,  15. 

"      hibernation  of,  22. 

"      vitality  of,  30. 

"      where  to  search  for,  19. 
Sparrow,  chipping,  46. 

"         field,  128. 

"        THE  SONG,  127, 170. 
Swallows  and  swifts,  189. 

«         bank,  241. 
Shrikes,  80, 137. 
Snow-bird,  the,  115. 
Snow-bunting,  the,  117, 136. 


Titmice,  122. 


T. 


W. 


Wren,  common  house,  41. 

«     winter,  123, 135. 
WILD  MICE,  57. 


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